LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 



Shelf. 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



SWEDENBORG AND THE NEW AGE 

OR, 

"THE HOLY CITY NEW JERUSALEM." 



WHAT IT IS, AND WHEN AND HOW IT " COMES DOWN 
FROM GOD OUT OP HEAVEN ;" 



SWEDENBORG AND HIS MISSION IN RELATION TO IT. 



INTRODUCTION ON GOD AND MAN. 



BY 






EDMUND A. BEAMAN, 

AUTHOR OF "THE RIVER OF LIFE," " FROWARD TO THE FROWARI 
"THE SCIENTIST'S THEOLOGY," ETC. 



"He shall give you another Comforter, that He may abide with you for- 
ever, even the SPIRIT of Truth."— John xiv. 16, 17. 
" And the Truth shall make you free." — John viii. 32. 




PHILADELPHIA: * 

x^L y Of w2skiN g 
J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO. 




1881. 



fh 







Copyright, 1881, by J. B. Lippincott & Co. 



CONTENTS. 



INTKODUCTION. 

GOD AND MAN. 

PAGE 

1. God the Same to All 7 

2. All Difference in Recipient Conditions 8 

3. God as the Word 8 

4. What is the Word ? 10 

5. God as Influx 10 

6. Nothing Finite in Influx 13 

7. Mistakes and Expedients 16 

8. God Unchangeable 18 

9. God is Love 19 

10. Not Outside 19 

11. Manifestations 20 

12. God's Personality 25 

13. Omnipresence 28 

14. True Basis of Thought 29 

CHAPTEE I. 

GENERAL PRINCIPLES. 

1. Swedenborg 31 

2. Why these Questions ? 31 

3. What we Propose to Show 32 

4. The New Departure 33 

5. Illustrative Example . . ... . . . .36 

6. The " Main Factor" 37 

7. Illumination 39 

8. Perception 40 

9. Understanding and Will 41 

10. Revelation from Perception 42 

11. Dictation 43 

12. Who have Revelation from Perception ? ..... 44 

13. Formulated Truth 45 



CONTENTS. 



14. The Writings 

15. Truth not Transferable. 

16. The Writings.— How Useful 

17. Not all the Truth . 

18. Truth .... 

19. Authority to the Man of this Age 

20. Evidence 

21. The Man of the Age and the Writings 



CHAPTEK II 



PAGE 
46 

48 
49 
49 
50 
51 
52 
54 



SWEDENBORG'S RELATION TO THE LORD. 

Inspiration 56 

Of Two Kinds 57 

The Lord's Part in the Writings ....... 58 



"Instilled" 

Swedenborg's Part 

His Partial Separation from the Body 
His Inspiration .... 
Conditions of Internal Inspiration 
Result of Regeneration 



swedenborg's 
Varied a Little" 



CHAPTEK III. 

relation to the LORD [Continued). 



Swedenborg and the Prophets 73 

Exceptional 76 

Individuality Sacredly Intact 79 

Why the Word is Holy in the Letter 81 

Instructed by Angels 82 

Writings not Correspondences ....... 83 

Instructed by the Lord 



7. 
8. 
9. The Lord's Writings 87 



86 



CHAPTER IV. 

man's relation to the lord. 

1. The Regenerated Man 89 

2. How the Lord governs Men 91 

3. Certain Passages : What they Show 93 

4. Strange Conclusions 94 

5. " Led by the Lord" 96 

6. Swedenborg as Servant of the Lord 97 

7. How all Man's Works are the Lord's 103 



CONTENTS. 5 
CHAPTEE V. 

HIS CALL AND PREPARATION. 

PAOE 

1. The Lord Appeared to Him 107 

2. " Specially Qualified" 109 

3. His Call 114 

4. His Preparation 115 

5. Not a Prodigy 121 

6. A Student of the Natural Sciences 122 

7. Swedenborg as a Scientist 124 

8. The Next Step 126 

9. His Search for the Soul 128 

10. His Principles of Investigation 128 

11. Changes his Plan 130 

12. Correspondence and Representation 132 

13. His State Ripening 134 

14. Another Transition 135 

15. Ripened for Nobler Work 137 

16. His Intromission 139 

17. His Intromission Progressive 140 

18. Importance of his Intromission 144 

CHAPTER VI. 

THE WRITINGS AND THE SPIRITUAL SENSE. 

1. The Writings 146 

2. The Spiritual Sense 148 

3. Absurd Conclusions 149 

4. Only Explanations 150 

5. What Swedenborg calls his Writings 152 

6. The Writings and the Word 154 

CHAPTER VII. 

THE BOOKS AND THE ADTENT. 

1. Advent Written on the Books 157 

2. Advent a Perception 158 

3. The Books only Treatises on the Advent 159 

4. Man as an Instrument 161 

5. The Writings only an Explanation 163 

6. General Principles , 165 

7. The Word Unveiled 167 

8. Knowledge First Needed 168 

9. Kind of Knowledge 169 



6 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

10. The Man Needed as an Instrument 170 

11. Style of Sacred Scripture 170 

12. Science of Correspondences 171 

13. The Expounder 172 

14. What Makes Man Man 174 

15. His own Writings 174 

16. Why and AVhen the Lord Conies 176 

17. Humanity in the Middle of the Last Century .... 176 

18. Why the Lord Came When He Did 177 

19. Results of Second Advent 179 



CHAPTEK VIII. 

CHRIST AND SWEDENBORG 

1. What Christ is to Man . 

2. The Man of the New Jerusalem 

3. Light of Experience 

4. Oracles 

5. Revealed by Explanation 

6. The Crucible of Thought 



183 
185 
187 
188 
190 
191 



CHAPTEK IX. 

AUTHORITY AND INFALLIBILITY. 

1. Different Kinds to Different States 195 

2. "Authority in the New Church" 200 

3. "To be Believed First" 201 

4. Misinterpreted Statements 202 

5. A State of " Intellectual Truth" 206 



CHAPTER X. 

DOCTRINE AND THE HOLY 

1. Doctrine 

2. Advent, Doctrine, and Holy City the same . 

3. Doctrine and Doctrinals .... 

4. This and Preceding Ages .... 

5. Swedenborg and the New Manhood 

6. The Writings an Appeal to Rational Minds . 

7. Wants of the Coming Man .... 

8. Conclusion 



209 
210 
211 
214 
216 
218 
220 
223 



INTRODUCTION. 



GOD AND MAN. 



1. God the Same to n _AH. 
In order to understand Swedenborg and the real character 
of his Writings, as relating to the man of this New Age, we 
must first have true views of God, who He is, what He is, and 
what is His relation to man. With true views of God, the 
Writings, in many places, have a very different meaning from 
what they have with false ideas of God. Swedenborg has made 
it especially plain that God is absolutely unchangeable, — un- 
changeable both in what He is and in what He does, — and also 
that He is "no respecter of persons ;" and thus that, so far as 
His action in relation to men is concerned, all men are alike. God 
is the Sun of the spiritual world, and His radiance is eternally 
and unchangeably going forth to all, as is the case with the radi- 
ance of His great representative, the sun of the natural world. 
And is it because of any change in what the natural sun does 
or gives, that one field is barren, another productive ; that one 
plant or tree is noble, another ignoble? So, is it owing to 
anything different that the Lord gives or does for men, that 
they are different from each other, different in character and 
different in capacity ? Is this the reason why Swedenborg was 
different from Nero, or different from Humboldt, or Shak- 
speare, or Napoleon ? Search the Scriptures, and search the 
Writings, and, though you may find certain misunderstood 
expressions, you will find, when truly interpreted, no affirmative 
answer to any of these questions. 

7 



8 IX TROD UCTION. 

2. All Difference in Recipient Conditions. 

On the contrary, Swedenborg plainly teaches that the cause 
of all the differences and of all the changes in men is in dif- 
ferences and changes in men as recipients of what the Lord 
gives. And this is in perfect accordance with reason and with 
what we see and learn of the operations of God in nature. A 
large recipient will receive more than a small one, not different 
in kind. And the action of what is received will be different 
in an obedient recipient from what it will be in a disobedient 
one ; and there will be, accordingly, a corresponding differ- 
ence in the results. All creatures below man are obedient re- 
cipients. All true men, so far as they are true, are obedient 
recipients. Selfish men, so far as they permit their selfishness 
to rule them, are disobedient recipients. That is to say, the 
former act according to the good impulses of the life that flows 
into them from the Lord ; the latter obey their selfish, evil 
promptings instead. Swedenborg was an obedient recipient ; 
his vessel was also a large one ; and by obedience it constantly 
increased in capacity and improved in quality, so that he be- 
came, in many respects, a most extraordinary man, — extraor- 
dinary for his goodness, and extraordinary for his great and 
varied acquirements and talents. But it was all owing, let 
me repeat, not in the least degree to anything different that 
the Lord did for him from what He does equally for all men, 
but to what was in and constituted the man and to his use of 
what the Lord gave him. 

But what did the Lord do for Swedenborg ? Rather, what 
is it that the Lord does for all men ? This is a question con- 
cerning which there need be no disagreement among those who 
read Swedenborg's writings in the light of their true spirit 
and philosophy. 

3. God as the Word. 

Nothing comes from God but what is called, in the Sacred 
Scriptures, the WOBD [Logos, in Greek]. The Lord does 



GOD AND MAN. 9 

nothing but as the Word ; just as nothing comes froin the 
sun but radiance, and just as the sun does nothing but as such 
radiance. The Word is actually God Himself in His omni- 
presence ; just as the radiance is the sun itself in its limited 
omnipresence. The Word is God in His goings out, as it 
were, of Himself and from Himself, in His processes of crea- 
tion, or of evolving finite being from Plimself ; just as the radi- 
ance is the sun in its processes of action on the earth, or just 
as the nervous system, or the vascular system, is the brain, or 
is the heart, in its processes of creating or evolving animal tis- 
sue and fibre, and thus animal organism. The Word is God 
at work, if I may so speak ; just as the radiance is the sun at 
work, or just as the nerves and the blood-vessels are the brain 
and the heart at work. " By Him [the Word] were all things 
made, and without Him was not anything made that was made." 
Thus the Word is the " Mighty Arm" of Jehovah ; just as the 
radiance is the mighty arm of the sun, or just as the nerves 
and the arteries are the mighty arm of the brain and the heart. 
To conceive of God but as the Word, is to conceive of the sun 
without an effluence, or the heart and brain without arteries 
and nerves ; and this is to think of God without action or man- 
ifestation : and there is no such God. We know nothing about 
God but as the Word; just as we know nothing about the sun 
but as it reveals itself in its effluence, and just as we practi- 
cally know nothing about the heart and brain but as they man- 
ifest themselves in their effluence in arteries and nerves. Let 
me repeat, for it is a very important fact, the Word is God, 
not at rest, not with power stayed and in reserve, — there is no 
such God, — but is God at work. When we have come to 
see this, and see it clearly, we have taken a most important 
step towards understanding God, and we never can have any 
really true ideas of Him until we have taken this step. And 
how significant the fact that all of the Lord's " comings" or 
"manifestations" to men have been as the Word! It was as 
the Word finited and verbalized in Sacred Scripture that 
2 



10 INTRODUCTION. 

the Lord many times came to the Jews. It was as the Word 
" made flesh" that He afterwards came and " dwelt among us" 
as " God with us." It is as the Word, which is meant by the 
" Son of Man," that He is now coming again, but now coming, 
not as veiled or clothed in human language, or in a finite per- 
sonal humanity, but, on the contrary, as the unveiled Spirit of 
Truth itself. 

4. WJiatis the Word? 

Thus it is as the Word that God is related to man. What, 
then, specifically and practically is the Word, and how does it 
operate with or in man? " Thy Word is Truth." " In Him 
[the Word] was Life ; and the Life was the Light of men." 
The Word " made flesh" said : " I am the Light of the World ;" 
" I am come a Light into the world ;" also, " I am the Way, 
the Truth, and the Life." Swedenborg says : " The Word 
is Divine Truth itself." " Truth"—" Life"— " Light." The 
Word is all these. As Life, the Word, or God as the Word, 
creates and sustains. As Truth — which is spiritual Light — 
the Word enlightens the mind and shows the " way of life." 
In its essence the Word is Love, — " God is Love." Life, 
Truth, Light, are only forms of operation and manifestation 
of Love, thus of God. All these, therefore, are one. They 
are all in and constitute what is called the Word. How are 
they related to man ? This is the great cpuestion. And I 
answer, They are related to man by what Swedenborg calls 
" influx ;" they are an influx into man, and into all men alike : 
" The Lord, with all His Divine Love, with all His Divine Wis- 
dom, thus with all His Divine Life, flows in with every Man." 
T. C. R. 364. 

5. God as Influx. 

Such " Influx" then, is all that God gives ; and to give this 
is all that He does for any man ; all that He ever has done, or 
ever will, or even can do, for man. For, as we have seen, such 
Influx is the Word in man, thus is God at work in man, 
and thus at work always with all His Attributes_in intensest 



GOD AND MAN. 11 

operation. This, I mean, so far as God is concerned. With 
all men, with all being, in fact, He simply and only gives, or 
is present as, such Influx. Of course, as we are all related, 
we receive influx also " mediate!?/" or are affected indirectly 
by influx into others and through its effects upon them. Swe- 
denborg was in no sense an exception to this universal and 
unchangeable principle. Like all other men, he never received 
anything from the Lord but such Influx, or such presence of 
the Lord as the Word. And its operation in him, so far as 
the Lord's agency had anything to do with its operation, was 
precisely the same in him as in all other men. 

" The Life of God, in all its fulness, is not only with good 
and pious men, but also with bad and impious men ; in like man- 
ner with the angels of heaven and with the spirits of hell ; the 
difference is, that the bad stop up the way and shut the door, 
that God [that Influx] may not enter into the lower parts of 
their mind ; but the good clear out the way and open the door, 
and also invite God to enter into the lower parts of their minds, 
as He dwells in the highest parts of it ; and thus they form the 
state of the will 'for the influx of love and charity and the state 
of the understanding for the influx of wisdom and faith, con- 
sequently for the reception of God ; but the bad obstruct that 
influx by various lusts of the flesh and spiritual defilements, 
which hinder and stop the passage ; but still God resides in 
the highest parts of them with all His Divine essence, and 
gives them the faculty of willing good and of understanding 
truth, which faculty every man has, but which he would not 
have unless life from God were in his soul. That the bad also 
have this faculty has been given me to know by much experi- 
ence. That every one receives life from God according to 
his FORM may be illustrated by comparisons with vegetables 
of every kind. Every tree, every shrub, every herb, and every 
blade of grass receives the influx of light and heat according 
to its form ; thus not only those which are of good use, but 
also those which are of evil use, and the sun with its heat does 



12 INTRODUCTION: 

not change their forms, but the forms change its effects in them- 
selves. It is similar with the subjects of the mineral kingdom : 
each of them, as well the excellent as the mean, receives influx 
according to the form of the contexture of the parts among 
themselves ; and so one stone receives it differently from another 
stone, one mineral differently from another mineral, and one 
metal differently from another metal. Some of them variegate 
themselves with most beautiful colors, some transmit the light 
without variegation, and some confuse and suffocate the light 
in themselves. From these few cases it may be evident that, 
as the sun of the world, with its heat and with its light, is 
equally present in one object as in another, but that the recip- 
ient forms vary its operations, so the Lord from the sun of 
heaven, in the midst of winch He is, is universally present 
with its heat, which in its essence is love, and with its light, 
which in its essence is wisdom ; but that the form of man, 
which is induced by the states of his life, varies the operations ; 
consequently that the Lord is not the cause why man is not 
regenerated and saved, but man himself." T. C. R. 366. 

Can anything be plainer than this ? Does Swedenborg any- 
where contradict it ? Does he anywhere say anything in the 
least qualifying these plain, practical, common-sense state- 
ments ? Is what he says of his own experience at variance 
with them ? Must not, on the contrary, all that he says of 
himself in his relation to the Lord be understood in the light 
of these universal and unchangeable principles ? Is it possible 
that he could have been, in any sense, according to his own 
unmistakable principles, as a private pupil, receiving special 
attention or special manipulation, as it were, at the hands of 
the Lord to prepare him for his mission ? " The life of God 
is, in all its fulness, with all men, with the evil equally as with 
the good, with devils equally as with angels ; all the difference 
is in the recipient vessels, the recipient forms." So far as the 
Lord was concerned, Swedenborg received nothing more from 
Him in preparation for his mission than the wickedest devils 



GOD AND MAN. 13 

of the wickedest hells receive. So far as such preparation was 
effected by anything special on the Lord's part, or in the Lord's 
agency in relation to it, it was nothing more than every man's 
preparation is for even the same mission ; just as, so far as the 
preparation of the oak to bear acorns is effected by anything 
special that the sun does for it different from other trees, it 
might bear chestnuts or apples as well. So also, in regard to 
the spirits or angels and prophets through whom Sacred Scrip- 
ture was written, — or the Word was veiled or clothed in human 
language, — according to the above principles or laws of the 
Lord's relation to man, as iterated and reiterated throughout ' 
the Writings, they received nothing from the Lord different 
from what all men receive, — nothing different in either quality, 
or measure, or degree ; they received nothing, absolutely and 
unqualifiedly nothing, but that " Influx" which is equally 
given by the Lord to all men. The holiness of Sacred Scrip- 
ture, as "the basis, continent, and firmament" of the Word, 
must be explained on an altogether different principle from 
that of any variation whatever in the Lord's agency or action 
in regard to men or the uses of men, and it can be, though 
this is not the place to do it. 

This point, then, we must regard as eternally and unalterably 
settled, — namely, that the Lord gives nothing and does nothing 
for men but give them influx of Himself, of Himself as the 
Word, thus as Divine Life, Truth, Light, or Love, with all the 
Divine attributes, just as the sun does nothing for the earth 
or anything on the earth but give its radiance, or itself in its 
effluence. 

6. Nothing Finite in Influx. 

But what is in this Divine Influx ? Are there ideas, thoughts, 
principles, doctrines in it ? No more than there are acorns, 
apples, peaches, berries in the sunbeams. All these are finite 
things. The Divine Influx, and everything in it, is infinite. 
The Lord can no more give such finite things than the sun can 
give fruits. All these things are in potency in the Divine 



14 INTRODUCTION. 

Influx, and the Lord can bring them out into actuality, but 
only through the finiting organism of mind which has first, in 
its own order, been finited and developed; just as the sun can 
produce fruits only through the organism of shrubs and trees, 
which are first produced in their order. Finited and finiting 
mind is just as necessary in the process of evolving from the 
Divine Influx ideas, principles, and doctrines as trees are in 
evolving fruits from the elements of earth, air, water, and sun- 
shine. The Lord is no mechanic. He is not outside of His 
work, as a mechanic is of his. He does nothing by manipula- 
tion, or by special design and act, as man does. He simply 
LIVES ; He is nowhere but inmostly the life of all being ; He 
creates by simply living ; therefore all that is is the resuit, and 
not by creation according to a certain plan, but by evolution 
of what is eternally reposited, in potency, in Himself. All 
possibilities, infinite possibilities, are in that influx which every 
man receives. All true ideas, principles, teachings, precepts 
of life are, in potency, in that Influx ; but they can be evolved 
or brought out into actuality only by the conditions supplied 
by already finited mind. For all these are the fruits of finite 
thought. And God does not think as man thinks, — that is, does 
not think finitely^ thus, does not ultimate ideas and words : 
" For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your 
ways my ways, saith the Lord. For as the heavens are higher 
than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my 
thoughts than your thoughts." 

When Swedenborg says, therefore, that " the Lord prepared 
him for his mission," " opened the sight of his spirit," " com- 
manded him what to write," " dictated to him," and the like, — 
also that " he was only an humble instrument to do the Lord's 
work," that " he did not act of himself but from the Lord," and 
that the revelations which he made were not his, but the Lord's 
through him, — we are not to understand him as saying anything 
in contradiction of his own teachings, or of the spirit and phi- 
losophy of his own principles ; we are not to understand him as 



GOD AND MAN. 15 

making his own case an exception to the immutable principles 
laid down in the paragraph above quoted from the " True Chris- 
tian Religion ;" we are not to understand him as receiving any- 
thing whatever, or in any sense or way, from the Lord, but 
that " Influx of Divine Truth" which is equally given to all 
men. God is in that Influx "preparing," "commanding," 
" dictating," " impelling," and the like, but with no difference 
as regards men as subjects of Influx. Swedenborg's language, 
as regards the Lord's relation to him, must be interpreted by 
the unchangeable principles so plainly laid down in bis writ- 
ings as regards the Lord's relation to all men alike. Sweden- 
borg was, in no sense, an exceptional expedient in the hands 
of the Lord to meet an emergency. The Lord has no expedi- 
ents and never resorts to any. Every emergency is met, and 
instantly, by the normal operation of the Divine Influx ; for 
there is in every moment's operation of that Influx, Infinite 
Wisdom, Infinite Providence, Infinite Power, or, if I may so 
speak, infinite and constant expediency. To make Sweden- 
borg, according to the views of some, an extraordinary or ex- 
ceptional expedient would be to make God, so far, a finite 
being. On the contrary, Swedenborg was simply and only 
the noble, normal fruit of certain recipient conditions and of 
the same Divine Influx into those conditions that flows into 
all conditions. The difference is, he " cleared out the way and 
opened the door, and also invited God to enter into the lower 
parts of his mind as He dwelt in the highest parts of it ; and 
thus he formed the state of his will for the influx of love and 
charity, and the state of his understanding for the influx of 
wisdom and faith, consequently for the reception of God," — he 
did these things as others did not do. It was this and not 
anything different in the Divine Influx, or in what the Lord 
gave him or did for him, that made his case exceptional or 
different from that of other men. 



1 6 1KTR OD UCTIOX. 

7. Mistakes and Expedients. 
But a few words more on " Divine expediency," as this is a 
point of such vital importance and is so generally misunder- 
stood. There are really no mistakes, no deficiencies, no fail- 
ures in God's operations, when we understand them truly ; and 
hence no resort to expedients in, as it were, unexpected emer- 
gencies. Infinite Wisdom and Infinite Providence never re- 
quire, and never resort to, expedients. We see this fact exem- 
plified in everything, even in Nature. The acorn, with God in 
it,— that is, with Life in it, and God inmostly in that life, — 
is sure, in the required conditions, to create or evolve an oak, 
and everything that belongs to an oak ; under proper condi- 
tions it cannot possibly fail to do so. So of every other germ 
of life. And this is because it is an offshoot from the Divine 
Life, and because the Divine is still operating in it as its vital- 
izing and evolving force or power. Hence,— and this is the 
point,— if an injury befalls the developing organism, as, for 
example, a wound in the flesh or the fracture of a bone, the 
remedy is instantly at hand and in operation, and simply as the 
normal result of life continued under the circumstances or in 
the changed conditions. 

So wonderfully perfect is life in Nature, which is God— God 
as the Word — working, so to speak, in " ultimates." Such life 
cannot act imperfectly; it cannot fail, either in wisdom, provi- 
dence, or power, on its plane or in its degree ; for all these are 
always in its every moment's action as life. How much more 
perfect, if possible, must be life above Nature, the Infinite 
Life itself, as not subject to the limitations of Nature ! How 
spontaneously and at once remedy must follow on the heels of 
injury, and this without anything like a resort to expedients, 
but simply from the fact that such is the normal operation 
of life, on every plane of life, in the changed conditions, thus 
simply from the fact, not that God devises and does something 
different as an expedient, but that He lives, or that He Him- 



GOD AND MAN. 17 

self is Life. Oh, what an infinite world there is in that one 
little word Life ! It contains everything ; everything is in it 
in potency or possibility ; expediency even is one of the features 
of its normal operation as Life. 

So, in what is called the " Fall," God did not take cogni- 
zance of it as a condition unexpected, and thus unprovided 
for, in any such sense as man takes cognizance of like things, 
and then devise and apply a remedy. Infinitely far from it. 
God was unaffected and unchanged in any sense or manner 
whatever, so far as He or what He did in His own absolute 
action was concerned. It was simply the result of the con- 
tinued operation of His Life as Life, but as varied in its oper- 
ation by the changed conditions, that was the remedy or the 
expedient. And this has always been so in every stage of 
man's " decline," in every changing phase of his relation to 
God. What God has absolutely done has never varied because 
of man's condition, — except in the sense in which its operation 
has been varied by that condition, — but has been unchangeably 
the same ; just as is the case with the sun in its relation to 
earth. The sun sends out, as it were, the same beams — what- 
ever happens to the recipient — day and night, summer and 
winter, and into the rose as into the nightshade, into the des- 
ert as into the green meadow, and in the calm as in the tem- 
pest; and just as the heart also sends its life equally into the 
diseased as into the healthy organ. The acting principle, or 
the influx given, is in each case the same. But the results are 
not the same ; these depend upon the recipient. The condition 
of the recipient in all cases modifies the action, and thus the 
effects of the action of the influx. How strikingly this is the 
case as regards the blood, also the nerve-fluid, in their relation 
to diseased and healthy organism ! They change not, because 
of the condition of the recipient organism, but the results of 
their action are very different because varied by the condi- 
tion of the organism. 

2* 



18 INTRODUCTION. 

8. God Unchangeable. 
So of that All-creating Life, the Word, God, with Whom 
" is no variableness, neither shadow of turning;" that Life has 
not changed, has not itself modified its own action, during all 
the successive stages of creation,. during all the successive 
phases of developing humanity. God has always been giving 
the same and doing the same, — the same in quality and the 
same also in amount and energy, — and not at one time more 
and at another time less. The variety in evolved or ultimated 
form, is owing to the fact of the infinite potencies in Him as 
Life, and of the different degrees or distances, so to speak, of 
evolution from Him. As He continues to be, and from this 
cause alone, one thing after another comes out, as it were, from 
Him into ultimated or evolved form, and without anything like 
resorting to expedients under emergencies : perfect wisdom, I 
repeat, requires no expedients. His revealing Himself in 
Sacred Scripture even, was not an expedient, neither was His 
Incarnation an expedient ; it was no more an expedient than 
the shooting out of a branch, or the coming of a leaf or a 
flower, or the development of the teeth or of the beard, in the 
order of growth, is an expedient ; no more an expedient than 
is the modified action of the blood in a wounded muscle or 
fractured bone, or in no other sense than that in which such 
modified action is an expedient ; in all which cases it is the 
normal action as modified by recipient conditions themselves. 
There is everything in the normal, unchanging action of life 
for every emergency. It is the nature of all life, from the 
purely Divine clear down to the lowest degree of the finitely 
evolved life, to ultimate itself in successively lower and lower 
forms, and then to act, with modified results, through these 
forms as recipient and modifying vessels. 

The great fact which I am endeavoring to make plain is 
that God, the Word, the Absolute Life, is in Himself] is in 
the very operation of Himself as Life, such fulness and per- 



GOD AND MAN. 19 

fection in all-creative energy, wisdom, providence, and power 
that all that He does or needs to do is to live ; and all that is, 
is the result ; just as all that the finitely evolved principle of 
His life in the seed or egg does, or needs to do, is to live, and 
the plant or animal is the result. 

9. God is Love. 

God is Love, or Love, in its real essential nature, is God. 
There is, indeed, no God but God as Love. Life is simply 
Love acting, Love living. The Word is Love creating, or 
evolving and ultimating itself in lower forms ; is Love cloth- 
ing itself with a body ; is Love revealing itself, and all this as 
a result of the fact of its living, or of its being Life ; or is 
Love shining. as light, and hence is called Divine Truth, which 
is Divine, spiritual light. The Love I speak of is infinitely 
more than an aftection, and so much more that it is the entity 
or Divine substance from which all substance, whether spirit- 
ual or natural, is derived ; it is, indeed, " all in all," so that if 
it were withdrawn from all, nothing would remain. Hence 
everything that is is only a phase or manifestation of Love, 
thus of God. Hence everything is full of Love, thus full of 
God, as the body is full of the soul. 

10. Not Outside. 

All that is, therefore, is God's dwelling-place, God's " tab- 
ernacle," but in different degrees, from Nature, as His "outer 
court," to regenerated angelic mind — rather to the " Divine 
Humanity" — as His " inmost sanctuary," His " Holy of Holies." 
God as Love, as the Word, as Divine Truth, as all-pervading, 
omnipresent Life, operates with infinite wisdom, providence, 
and power within us, always within vs, never and nowhere 
outside of us, except through others in relation to us : " Be- 
hold, the kingdom of God is within you." Nothing but God's 
foot-stool, nothing but His materialized expression, or Love 
materialized, so to speak, nothing but the evolved effects of 



20 INTRODUCTION. 

the operation of the Divine Life, is outside of us. It is vain 
for us to look for Him or think of Him outside of us. We 
err most sadly when we think of God as being outside of any 
being. Everything outside is finite. There is no God outside, 
any more than there is heart, or brain, or soul outside the little 
world of the body. God would- not be God outside, but a 
mere manifestation of God, as the body is of the heart, or 
brain, or soul. God lives in His kingdom— the soul of man— 
_ as a King lives in his kingdom ; more truly, as the soul lives in 
its kingdom, the body. All that is outside, I repeat, is but a 
manifestation of God. The whole universe is but such 
manifestation of God. But the universe is no more, for that 
cause, God than the body is the man. 

11. Manifestations. 
But God's manifestations or appearings of Himself,— what 
in reality, are they ? How do they differ from Himself? How 
does the body, which is a manifestation of the man, differ from 
the man ? Yet the cases are not quite parallel. The body 
exists, is evolved directly from what is within, as an effect 
directly representing a cause within. So is the universe and 
everything in it and of it, as an effect in relation to God as the 
cause. It came from God as an effect from its cause. But 
there are Divine manifestations of appearances of another kind 
which depend upon, and are characterized by, the states of 
those persons before whom they take place. The former mani- 
festations are made to all men, though with a difference ; the 
latter to comparatively few. This is the kind of which Swe- 
denborg speaks as being made to him. What is the real nature 
of this kind of manifestation ? Did God, in any sense, or in 
the least degree, absolutely vary in what He did from what 
He always does, as the cause of such manifestations ? We see 
from the views we have given of God from Sacred Scripture 
and from the writings that such variation was simply impossi- 
ble and absurd. We cannot yield a particle in our view of 



GOD AND MAN. 21 

God's absolute unehangeableness, — unehangeableness as well 
in what he absolutely does as in what he is. If He manifested 
Himself to Swedenborg, — as we doubt not He did, as He does 
also to the angels, — the cause of such manifestation and of every- 
thing in it as a manifestation, was entirely and exclusively in 
Swedenborg's own state. It was his state, and nothing else, 
that made such manifestation possible and that brought it 
about. Its peculiar quality and character were in him as the 
cause. God is really no more present in such peculiar mani- 
festations than He is when the states of men are such that they 
do not take place. Can God be more than omnipresent ? 

How, then, does God manifest Himself to man ? Sweden- 
borg says : " I can sacredly and solemnly declare that the 
Lord Himself has been seen of me." Again : " The Lord, 
our Savior, has manifested Himself to me in a sensible per- 
sonal appearance." In view of the real character of what we 
call God, and of what we are taught about him in Sacred 
Scripture and in the Writings, — for we rest upon His character 
as the Word and Swedenborg give it to us, — how could this 
be? and what does it mean? Mark, it was the Lord our 
Savior that was seen of him, or that manifested Himself to 
him. And Swedenborg adds, in close context with the first 
citation above, that " the Lord opened and enlightened the 
interior part of his soul." 

Who is " the Lord our Savior" ? We all agree that He is 
identically that same God, the Word, the Life, the Divine 
Truth " brought forth to view," of which I have been speak- 
ing. And are we not all agreed that God in Himself never 
changes, any more than the sun, or the radiance from the sun, 
changes? Like Sacred Scripture, "the Lord our Saviour" is 
God the Word clothed, God the Word mediating, or God the 
Word with His eternally unchanging and unchangeable action 
modified and varied by the recipient medium in and through 
which His action takes place. Sacred Scripture is the result of 
such modified action. The Word " made flesh" is the result of 



22 INTRODUCTION. 



such modified action. I mean that neither the Word made 
Sacred Scripture nor the Word made flesh is the result of spe- 
cific design and purpose, and then of changed or modified action, 
on the part of God ; but, on the contrary, that it is the result 
only and solely of the Divine Influx into modifying condi- 
tions ; hence that the changed conditions are the responsible 
cause of any appearance of change on the part of the Divine ; 
just as any apparent change in the action or manifestations of 
the sunlight is owing entirely to changed recipient conditions, 
and just as light entering the eye is of one color or another, or 
is painful or pleasant, exactly according to the condition of the 
eye. So the Word, whether clothed in finite teachings and 
human language or in an external personal humanity, is not 
really the result of any difference in the Divine action or 
purpose any more than the light, as colored and shaded by 
clouds or by a smoky atmosphere, is the result of any dif- 
ferent action of the sun. The common ideas of God, finite 
Him and make Him a being of resorts and expedients, when 
these are all mere appearances, when the fact is, that His 
unfailing, normal, unchangeable action is infinite perfection 
itself, under whatever changes, conditions, or circumstances ; 
as it is the action of infinite love itself, it flows, in the infinite 
wisdom and providence and power and Love, in all conditions 
and under all circumstances— and spontaneously does so— for 
the ends of Love. That is to say, we have the Word made mani- 
fest in Sacred Scripture or in a fleshly personality, not because 
God saw the changed condition of man, and saw, therefore, 
that such was man's need, but because that was the spon- 
taneous result of His absolutely and eternally unchanged 
normal action as modlfiedhy changed conditions. So infinitely 
full of every attribute of the Divine Nature, even of resorts 
and expedients as it were, is every moment's action of the 
Divine Life. It was the continued flowing of God as the 
Word into man's changed condition — in other words, it was 
the continued living of God as God— that resulted, under the 



GOD AND MAN. 23 

changed modifying conditions, in Sacred Scripture, and after- 
wards in the Incarnation. And how wonderful and how full of 
love and wisdom and providence the fact that these apparent — 
not real — changes in God were exactly what man needed, and 
without which he could not have continued to exist as man, 
but would have relapsed to a condition worse than that of the 
beasts ! 

Again, we ask, what does Swedenborg mean when he says 
that " the Lord manifested Himself before him in a sensible 
personal appearance"? Does he mean that the Lord was 
finited out into external shape and actually stood before him 
somewhat as He had stood before the disciples ? No one can 
think this who has any true thought of the Lord as He is rep- 
resented by Swedenborg. It was not such a finited presentation 
of the Lord. Swedenborg does not say this. Rather, it was 
a " manifestation," or " sensible personal appearance." 
And was this appearance really and purely the Lord? "Was 
it only what was divine ? or was it not, on the contrary, the 
Lord as the Word, as living Divine Truth, clothed and finited 
into external visible appearance by ichat teas in Swedenborg 's 
own mind, in like manner as is the case with the angels, to 
whom things appear objectively or outside themselves, when, 
in reality, there are no such things outside, but they so appear 
from what is in the angels themselves? Swedenborg says that 
" in the other life, by virtue of the light communicated from 
a celestial and spiritual origin by the Lord, there are sensibly 
exhibited to the sight of spirits and angels most astonishing 
scenes, — as paradisiacal gardens, cities, palaces, habitations, 
besides other objects." A. C. 1534. "The very celestial and 
spiritual of the Lord," again, he says, " manifests itself by 
light before the external sight of the angels ;" but the degree in 
which the light is received is in proportion to the degree of the 
celestial and spiritual with the angels, and the quality of the 
light is according to the quality of that celestial and spiritual. 

This is brimful of significance in connection with our sub- 



24 INTRODUCTION. 

ject, as also in connection with the fact that the Lord appears 
to the celestial angels as a sun, but to the spiritual angels as a 
moon. A. C. 1529. Swedenborg says that, " In order that he 
might be confirmed in this, his interior vision was so far opened, 
and he saw plainly the moon shining." And this means, of 
course, not that there was actually a spiritual moon, or the 
Lord as such moon, outside of him, but that in the state in 
which he then was the Lord manifested Himself to him, and 
thus appeared outside of him, as a moon. We read in Sacred 
Scripture that the pure in heart shall see God, and that the 
Lord will manifest Himself to those who keep His command- 
ments. It was because Swedenborg kept His commandments 
that, as a result of the consequent processes of regeneration, 
the " interior part of his soul was opened and enlightened." so 
that he saw the Lord, but saw Him, just as the angels do, " ac- 
cording to the degree and quality of the celestial and spiritual 
in himself." According to his own teachings, it would be im- 
possible for him to see the Lord, or have the Lord appear or 
manifest Himself to him in any other way, or for any other 
cause than that depending on his own state as a recipient of 
the Divine Influx. In no case has the Lord ever appeared to 
man or angel as He really is ; it has always been only a mani- 
festation, and that even only as measured, limited, and qualified 
by the state of him before whom the manifestation took place. 
In no case has such manifestation been purely God, but always 
God clothed, or, which is the same, the Word, or God as Di- 
vine Truth clothed ; just as is the case with the sun as it 
appears to the eye, — it is the sun clothed by the earth's atmos- 
phere and by the things or state of the eye, though the cases 
are not exactly parallel, for the Lord is really within, while the 
sun is outside. We must not forget the fact that all of the 
Lord's comings have been simply manifestations of Himself as 
the Word, thus as Divine Truth. Thus Swedenborg says: "To 
the end that the Lord might be constantly present, He has dis- 
closed to me the spiritual sense of His Word in which Divine 



GOD AND MAN. 25 

Truth is in its light, and in this lie is continually present." 
That is to say, the Lord is continually present only in the 
working, operating, or creating phase or aspect of His nature 
as the Word, and manifestly so only as the Word, as living 
Light, or as it really shines in the interiors of a mind opened 
by regeneration. And the Lord is present thus only " accord- 
ing to the degree and quality of the celestial and spiritual with 
man." And this shows that the manifestations or personal 
appearings of the Lord are, from the very nature of the case, 
never the same to two persons, nor to the same person twice 
alike, so much does qualifying state have to do with them. 
And this suggests the question of God's personality — what 
is it ? 

12. God's Personality. 

Is there a "personal God" ? We answer, yes. But, then, 
what is meant by person ? Does it necessarily imply limited 
outline, figure, shape ? We answer, no. God does not exist 
as person in any such finite, external sense, though He so man- 
ifests Himself, as we have seen above. God, in His absolute, 
unfinited, unrevealed, or unmanifested nature, is not person in 
any such gross sense of the word. It is true Swedenborg 
says that " God, being Man, has a body and everything be- 
longing to it." D. L. and W. 18. But does he mean by this 
that God has such body, with all its organs and members, in 
actual, outwardly developed shape or form ? Does he mean 
that God has eyes with which to look out upon external things, 
as we do, and ears to hear audible sounds, as we hear? Of 
course not. He only means that God has all these, everything, 
in fact, that belongs to the whole universe, in potency, or in 
first principles, or in the possibilities from which all things are ; 
like as the seed or the egg contains all the possibilities of the 
future plant or bird. God consists of infinite possibilities ; the 
universe consists of these possibilities developed and develop- 
ing into actualities. What Swedenborg means by the above is 
evident from what he says in " Arcana Ccelestia," 3869, namely, 



26 INTRODUCTION. 

" That Jehovah has neither ears nor eyes as man has is known, 
but ear and eye signify an attribute predicable of the Divine' 
namely, infinite will and infinite intelligence. Infinite will is 
Providence, and infinite intelligence is foresight ; this is what 
ear and eye mean, in the supreme sense, when attributed to 
Jehovah." Of course the " body, and everything that belongs 
to it," has each a corresponding supreme meaning as applied 
to the Lord. Thus it is in an infinitely higher sense than that 
which applies to us that God is person. And yet God is not 
simply diffused being, like air or light. On the contrary, there 
are in Him all the essentials in their beginnings or potencies 
which, when ultimated in their most perfect form, constitute 
personal man and angel,— constitute, in fact, the personal man- 
ifestations of the God-Man. Man is really man— finitely, per- 
sonal man— only because God, of whom he is the image and 
likeness, is Divinely and Infinitely personal Man, Man in first 
principles or infinite possibilities. We must not think of man 
even as person, because he has limited figure or shape, and 
visible organs and members, though we cannot think of him 
without these, for these are not what make man man or con- 
stitute him personal being. It is because we do not think of 
God thus that we are bewildered about His personality. How 
can Omnipresence have such limited and defined personality? 
No wonder the sensible scientist denies a " personal God." It 
is contrary to true manhood reason to suppose that Infinity 
and Omnipresence are in such externally visible and meas- 
urable shape. God's manifestations of Himself, or His ap- 
pearings to men, are a totally different matter. These are due, 
as I have shown, to what is in man as a finite and finking 
recipient vessel. What flows in takes inform of the vessel 
into which it flows. Out of Christ, or Deity, as clothed and 
manifested in finite humanity, it is impossible to think of God 
but vaguely and absolutely. Out of Christ, we can think of 
God only as Love, Wisdom, Power, Providence. 

But what is it that really constitutes personality ? What is 



GOD AND MAN. 27 

it that makes man even a personal being ? What is it that 
makes you a different person from me? Is it your figure, 
your length, the shape of your head, the form of your limbs 
and features? Is not man even, a person only in virtue of 
those inherent qualities and capacities of which the body, con- 
sisting of organs and members, is the ultimated form ? Is it not 
these, — these qualities and capacities, — rather than anything 
relating to shape or figure, or anything manifested to external 
sense, that constitute man's personality, that give him identity 
and individuality, that make him different, personally, from 
every other being, from every other man, in fact? And this 
is the ground on which God is person ; it is His quality, His 
potency, is that which constitutes His peculiar identity and 
individuality, as differing from those of all other beings. And 
thus for man to be in God's image and likeness is to be so, not 
in outward form, but in inward quality and character, is to be 
so in that which really makes him man. Outward, personal 
form cannot be predicated of the Divine Being, out of Christ, 
His finite, personal manifestation of Himself, any more than 
it can of Life, or Truth, or Love, or Light, and these, we have 
seen, are just what God is in His real nature. 

The common views of God as a personal being belong to a 
darker age than that in which we are now living, — belong to a 
low, sensuous, Israelitish state of mind. When we have, by 
regeneration, risen above that merely natural, external view of 
God, we shall find Him risen, — risen in our truer conceptions 
of Him, — " we shall wonder how we could ever have been con- 
tent with a mere finite, personal manifestation of Him, a being 
so much like ourselves, a being outside of us and listening and 
influenced by our selfish prayers, and pleased by our fulsome 
praises ! We shall have no less a personal God than before ; 
we shall not think of Him any the less in His personal mani- 
festation ; but we shall think more of Him as that of which 
such manifestation is comparatively only as the shadow. 
There will be all the difference between our outgrown personal 



28 INTR OD VCTION. 

God— if I may so speak without being misunderstood— and our 
found or risen personal God, risen in our truer conceptions of 
Him, that there is between the mere child's personal man, as 
the child conceives of him, and the scientist's and Christian 
philosopher's personal man. The child takes cognizance of 
only external form, of only figure and shape. The scientific, 
Christian philosopher sees a world within and above what the 
eye sees. So you will see within and above the manifested 
personality of your risen God that which makes Him all that 
He is to you and all that He is to the universe, as the in- 
finitely present, infinitely potent, infinitely wise, and infinitely 
active cause and source of all being. You will recognize a 
personality that perpetually fills the heavens, fills the universe 
of universes, in fact, but which manifests itself, or becomes 
manifest to each individual man or angel, only exactly accord- 
ing to his state." — Authors sermon, "He is Risen." 

13. Omnipresence. 
And with this view of God's personality His Omnipresence 
is divested of all its absurdity and mystery. With former 
views of personality we never could conceive of the Divine 
Omnipresence. We cannot conceive otherwise than of God's 
absolute presence everywhere, but present never and nowhere 
without, but always and everywhere within, present as life is 
present within the body. For this, as we have seen, is just 
what God is, and, with its attributes, all that God is,— He is 
Life. It is as Life, and only as Life, that He creates and sus 
tains and governs ; and it is only by actual presence that He 
does these things. He does nothing, He exercises no power, 
but by His actual, tangible, inmost presence in the subjects of 
His operations and power. We see it now, and see plainly, 
that it is only as God works in us as the soul in the body that 
He gives us life and being ; and we see how necessarily it de- 
pends upon our state of recipiency whether the operations of 
His presence within us give us pleasure or pain, joy or sorrow. 



GOD AND MAN. 29 

For He as the Divine Life is always present within what we 
call our life, as the heart life and brain life are within the 
tissues of the body. If such Divine Life ever gives pain or 
sorrow, it is only when, from transgressing the laws of life, we 
have become diseased, and the cause of the pain or sorrow is 
simply owing to the persistent effort of the Divine Life to re- 
move the disease, just as it is with the body in a diseased con- 
dition ; its pain is owing to the presence of life from the heart 
and brain in the diseased organism, and in actual effort to re- 
move the disease. It is not because God has left us that we 
suffer,— He cannot leave us. If He left us we should cease 
to be. On the contrary, it is because He, as Life, is trying to 
restore us, because He is so infinitely and absolutely present 
in us, and present in His operations as Life, — in His operations 
as Love, in fact, with all its attributes of Wisdom, Power, and 
Providence, — for this, as we have seen, is just what God as Life 
is. He is Love, but Love not as an affection, but Love itself, 
Love in its essence. 

God, then, never came to Swedenborg, never came to any 
man ; for He has always been present, absolutely present, with 
all men, rather in all men ; but He manifested Himself to 
Swedenborg, as He has to other men and to angels. And we 
may see what is meant by this ; we may see that God, from 
His absolute presence within, has, under certain conditions or 
states of mind, and because of such conditions as modifying 
the Divine Operations, become manifest, or appeared exter- 
nally, and, therefore, in an external 'personality, to men ; but 
that He did this without in the least degree changing or 
modifying His absolute presence within. 

14. True Basis of Thought. 

Now if we take false views of God, — that He is a sort of 
mysterious being outside of us ; that He acts from arbitrary will 
and purpose and according to plan or pattern previously con- 
ceived ; that He comes and goes ; that He now does little and 



30 INTRODUCTION. 

now more ; that He takes special cognizance of one man and his 
work, or in any other sense than that in which He takes special 
cognizance of each and of all men and their work,— take such 
a view of God as some men evidently do, and we shall become 
all bewildered and divided and in irreconcilable difference of 
opinion on all subjects in which God is a factor. 

But if we have given a correct view of God— of God as the 
Word, thus as the Truth and the Life ; of God as an " Influx 
of Divine Truth," and as eternally and unchangeably the same 
to all men ; of God within and not without ; of what He is in 
His absolute nature, and what in His manifestations ; of His 
personality and of His Omnipresence— let us take this view as 
our standing ground and our basis of thought and of inquiry 
on all questions relating to God, or in which the Divine is a 
factor. Let us keep this view, under all circumstances and 
conditions, as constantly and unfailingly in sight as the mariner 
does his compass, and we shall then be led to true views of 
Swedenborg and his writings, and of both in their relation to 
the Lord, and also in their relation to the man of this New 
Age. 



SWEDENBORG AND THE NEW AGE. 



CHAPTER I. 

GENERAL PRINCIPLES. 

1. Swedenhorg. 

Who was Swedenborg? what was his mission? how was he 
prepared for his mission ? in what did his qualifications for it 
consist? did the Lord do anything different for him from what 
he does for all men ? was there anything special or extraor- 
dinary in the Lord's relation to him, in any other sense than 
that in which these terms apply to all men ? what is the real 
nature of his writings ? are they in any sense the Word or 
Sacred Scriptures ? are they divine ? are they Swedenborg's 
writings or the Lord's writings ? are they the Lord's Second 
Advent ? what is that advent ? what is Swedenborg's relation 
to the Advent ? what is the New Jerusalem ? 

2. Why these Questions? 

These questions have become of unusual interest of late 
because of extraordinary views entertained by some in regard 
to the " Writings." It has been claimed that they are the 
" Lord's writings ;" that they are the " Word without the ex- 
ternal sense ;" and that they are the " Lord's Second Advent." 
Thus it is claimed that the Writings are not an explanation 
merely of the internal or spiritual sense of the Word, but that 
they themselves are the spiritual sense. This is equivalent to 

31 



32 SWEDENBORG AND THE NEW AGE. 

Baying that they arc the very " Spirit of Truth" itself, and it 
was indeed as the Spirit of Truth that the Lord promised to 
come again. But there is no ratio between Truth itself and 
verbalized truth, or a verbal statement or explanation of truth, 
any more than there is between the sunlight and a description of 
the sunlight. The Writings must be either truth itself, truth in 
its spirit, truth, that is to say, in its spiritual essence and form, 
or they must be a mere explanation or finited, verbal statement 
of truth. They must, therefore, be the spiritual sense of the 
Word, either in the sense of an explanation merely of the 
spiritual sense, or in the sense of the " Spirit of Truth." 
And such extraordinary views about the Writings have re- 
sulted in equally extraordinary views about Swedenborg, the 
instrument of them. We have thought, therefore, that this 
whole subject demanded a most thorough and careful exam- 
ination, and in the very light itself of the spirit and philosophy 
of the Writings. 

3. What we Propose to Shoiv. 

We propose to show, and from the Writings themselves, 
that they are in no sense whatever the Lord's writings, further 
than that He gave the influx of light and life to the mind that 
produced them ; that they are no more the Lord's writings, m 
any other sense, than all men's writings are the Lord's ; that 
they are no more the Lord's writings than the fruit produced 
on a tree is the sun's fruit, or the Lord's through the sun, 
which, we know, is His only in the sense in which His life 
evolved or created the organism of the tree that produced the 
fruit ; and, moreover, that they are not the " Lord's Second Ad- 
vent" in any other sense than that of a treatise on, or explana- 
tion or instruction about, the Advent ; and that they are in no 
other sense the Word than that of an explanation of the Word. 
We propose to show, on the contrary, that, with the above 
qualification, the Writings are, in the fullest sense of the 
word, purely and exclusively Swedenborg's writings ; and that 



GENERAL PRINCIPLES. 33 

they are as much more completely his writings as he was 
more completely a faithful " servant of the Lord ;" and that 
certain expressions which he uses in relation to himself and 
the Lord's relation to him no more belong to him — making all 
allowances for differences in men and differences in uses — than 
they belong to all men ; in a word, that, so far as the Lord 
was concerned, in what He did for Swedenborg, Swedenborg 
was in no sense different from other men ; just as, so far as 
the sun is concerned in what it does for the tree bearing noble 
fruit, such tree is in no sense different from the trees bearing- 
ignoble fruit ; that Swedenborg was no " prodigy ;" that he 
was remarkable even, not for what the Lord did for him, but 
for the manner in which he received and used what the Lord 
equally gives to or does for all men ; that his writings, there- 
fore, have no other authority than that of the truth that is in 
them, and in them, not as real living truth, but as mere verbal 
statements of truth ; and that they have such authority even 
only as they meet the rational demands of the mind that reads 
them ; and, moreover, that the authority of truth thus ration- 
ally seen, and by each one for himself, is the only authority 
that can be acknowledged in the true New Jerusalem. 

4. TJie New Departure. 

Let us at the start, and for the sake of clearness from the 
contrast, briefly consider the claims, enforced by no lack of 
knowledge of what Swedenborg literally says, that his writings 
are the Lord's writings. It is plain that this claim makes the 
Writings virtually another Sacred Scripture, another word of 
God, though, it is confessed, " without the external sense," 
and yet " without an internal or spiritual sense," the Writings 
themselves being, it is claimed, the spiritual sense rather than 
a mere explanation of it. This makes the Writings another 
Divine revelation, like the Sacred Scriptures, but differing 
from any previous revelation in being addressed and accom- 
modated to further developed and higher states of mind. In 
8 



34 SWEDENBORG AND THE NEW AGE. 

such accommodated form the Writings are, therefore, to be to 
the more matured coming man essentially what the books of 
Moses were to the Israelites. According to this claim, the 
Writings, like the Sacred Scriptures, have come as verbally 
expressed Divine authority, as " thus saith the Lord." The 
difference is, the Israelite was, practically, scarcely more than 
a physical man, and his responsible acts were, therefore, only 
acts of the body ; hence it was such acts that his Scriptures, 
as he understood them, recognized and rewarded or punished ; 
whilst the " coming man," the true man of the New Jerusalem, 
is a rationally thinking, loving man, and is, therefore, respon- 
sible for his thoughts and motives of action as well as for his 
actions. Revelation to the latter, therefore, or his " thus 
saith the Lord," only addresses a higher plane of mind than 
did the Israelitish Scriptures. I mean that truth, according 
to this view of the Writings, must be, or rather has been, in 
just as imperative and divinely formulated statements, meas- 
ured down to the man of this New Jerusalem Age, as it was 
to the less developed man of the Old Jerusalem Age. That 
is to say, the man of the New Jerusalem must, like the man 
of the Old Jerusalem, be governed by divinely exact, in- 
fallible, verbal statements of truth rather than by the Lord 
in His Advent as the Spirit of Truth actually shining in and 
enlightening the mind. According to this view, the New 
Church man must be just as punctilious in his observance 
of what the Writings literally and formally say as the Israelite 
was in his observance of what " Moses and the Prophets" 
said. 

Thus the Word as the " Spirit of Truth" actually flowing 
into New Jerusalem mind, as it did not and could not with 
similar results flow into Old Jerusalem mind, seems to be 
either wholly ignored or to be given an altogether secondary 
place. And yet the Word, as such actually and consciously 
present influx as the Spirit of Truth, is really the great dis- 
tinctive characteristic of this New Age ; is, indeed, that which 



GENERAL PRINCIPLES. 35 

constitutes the real " glory" of the " Second Advent." For 
all of the Lord's comings have been as the Word, — that is to 
say, have been as Truth in one form or another in its relation 
to mind. To the Israelite the Lord as Truth could come only 
in words, only in finite statements of truth ; to the coming- 
man, on the contrary, the Lord's real distinctive coming must 
be as light "shining in and illuminating the mind ; that is to 
say, as the Spirit of Truth. But according to the view of 
which I am speaking, Swedenborg seems to be regarded as a 
specially prepared instrument, not by whom the real character 
of Sacred Scripture — the lowest written or verbalized form 
of the Word — was explained, but through whom a higher 
written or verbalized form of the same Word was given by 
the Lord. 

Yes, according to this view, the " coming man," the man of 
the regenerated manhood of the race, the man capable of illus- 
tration by the influx of the " Spirit of truth" itself, — as is to 
be the case with all regenerated men, as was the case with 
Swedenborg, — is to have truth verbally measured down to 
him, it seems, in a divinely authoritative form, as the dark- 
minded Israelite had. Thus the man of the future, whose 
mind is destined to become more and more opened to the 
Word in its internal form of " living light," is to be forever 
kept in verbal " leading strings," like the man of the past. 
We can easily see why the child or the undeveloped man, as 
was the Israelite, must be told; why it must be " Thus saith 
the Lord ;" why the great principles or laws of life must be 
verbally stated to him in a divinely authoritative form. But 
we cannot see why this should be necessary or even useful to 
the developed or developing man of the New Jerusalem phase 
of humanity, whose mind is opening to receive truth from influx, 
thus to receive the very Spirit of truth, — which is to receive 
truth as living light. Any authoritative statement of truth is, 
and it ought to be, most repulsive to the real man of this age. 
The true man of this asje can acknowledge no truth but as it 



36 SWEDENBORG AND THE NEW AGE. 

appeals to his own rational thought and gives him light. He 
can receive the husk of truth only as he sees the corn in it, 
and then he will receive it for the sake of the corn, not the 
husk. 

The Writings are not even the husk, for they are not as an 
outgrowth from the corn ; they have not come by correspond- 
ence, as Sacred Scripture has ; they are nothing but a treatise ; 
yet they are, as such, of priceless value until you have come 
into a state to see the truth itself, and then their value is of a 
very different character. You then see truth as Swedenborg 
did, as all regenerated men do ; you see it illuminating the 
very letter itself of the Word as you devoutly and lovingly 
read it. What do you then care, when you have arrived at 
this state, for any explanation, any verbal statement of truth 
or about truth ? 

5. Illustrative Example. 

I once heard of a man, a good old man, who had read the 
" Heavenly Doctrines'' with great delight and profit for about 
fifty years. His interest in them then gradually subsided, 
until they at length lost their attraction for him. He laid 
them aside and read the Bible only. Why was this ? The 
Writings had done their work for him ; they had explained to 
him the real nature of Sacred Scripture as a casket of jewels ; 
they had given him the key to the casket ; he had applied the 
key, and had at length come into that regenerate state in wbich 
he actually saw the jewels in the casket, — jewels which had 
only been described to him before. He no longer needed the 
key after he got sight of the jewels. The living truth itself — 
of which the Writings are only verbal treatises — flowed sen- 
sibly into his mind while he was reading the Scriptures, and 
exhilarated and illuminated it. He was in ' ; revelation from 
perception." 

A description of the landscape, or of the things seen in the 
sunlight, may be of priceless value to one by blindness de- 



GENERAL PRINCIPLES. 37 

privcd of the sunlight ; hut what does he care for such descrip- 
tion after his sight has been restored ? " In proportion as the 
love is kindled," says Swedenborg, " the truth shines ; for the 
good of love is the very vital fire, . . . is comparatively as the 
flame of the sun which is heat and light." And it is regener- 
ation, and that alone, that " kindles the love," thus that enables 
one to see the jewels in the casket. You may be intellectually 
informed about the jewels, you may learn how to use the key 
to open the casket, but by no possibility can you see the jewels 
but as your love is kindled as the result of regeneration. The 
old man in question was in a state to see measurably, as Sweden- 
borg himself saw ; but this by no means implies that he pos- 
sessed the qualifications to do the work which Swedenborg 
did. Other similar cases might be mentioned, in which the 
Sacred Scriptures, from a similar cause, had become, to those 
devoutly reading them, luminous with the very " spirit of 
truth," and hence of infinitely greater value than any other 
book, not excepting even the Writings. 

6. The "Main Factor:' 

Prior to the year 18b'0 there seemed to be no important 
difference of opinion in regard to Swedenborg's writings or 
the nature of his mission. But in that year the late Rev. 
Thomas Worcester, in his address before the Convention, at 
Chicago, spoke thus of Swedenborg : 

" When Swedenborg became receptive of those two loves 
[love to God and love to man], he had within himself the most 
essential means of understanding the Scriptures ; he had a 
genuine love for the truths contained in them, for he loved 
what they teach. And besides, the good loves which he had, 
opened his mind upward to heaven, to the Lord, so that he 
could receive heavenly light, — the spirit of truth, the Holy 
Spirit, — which exalts and illustrates the things contained in 
the literal sense. This is what enabled him to see and to draw 
forth true doctrine from the Word." (See " New Jerusalem 



38 SWEDENBORG AND THE NEW AGE. 

Magazine" for August, 1860, p. 80.) A very few took excep- 
tion to this. 

According to the view above stated by Mr. Worcester — and 
we were not aware that any differed from it at that time, and 
we presume that he was not — the " main factor" in Sweden- 
borg's qualifications for his mission, though by no means the 
only important or extraordinary one, was his state of regener- 
ation. It was to this that exception was taken ; and yet it has 
since been admitted, by a part, at least, if not by all who once 
opposed it, that the " gift of perception or illustration from 
the Lord, by which man sees the truth not from himself but 
from the Lord, presupposes a state in which man has reached 
not only the sixth, but even the seventh, stage of the regenerate 
life ;" and that it is only when he is regenerated as to his celes- 
tial degree . . . that he is in the condition in which he may 
be " internally inspired,"' or " receive revelation from percep- 
tion." And all admit that Swedenborg was " internally in- 
spired," or, which is the same, was in a state of revelation 
from perception. 

This high state of regeneration, in its relation to Sweden- 
borg's other qualifications, is, comparatively, we may say, by 
way of illustration, as the retina to the other organs of the 
eye. The retina is an expansion of the optic nerve, thus is 
immediately connected with the brain, and, through the brain, 
with the soul itself. However perfect the eye in other respects, 
there could be no vision without the retina. The other organs 
of the eye are as Swedenborg's other qualifications. But as 
these organs are impotent without the nerve connecting them 
with the soul, so Swedenborg's other qualifications, however 
perfect they might be, would be of no avail, as regards his 
great mission, but for that state of regeneration which opened 
his mind upward to the reception of that influx from the 
Lord which filled him with light, which internally inspired 
him, or put him in a state of " revelation from perception." 
It was this that gave significance and power to all his other 



GENERAL PRINCIPLES. 39 

qualifications, and made them effective, as it were, as instru- 
ments ; just as the retina makes all the other organs of the eye 
effective as instruments of sight. 

Here, then, is one point, and a fundamental one, on which 
all must be agreed, namely, that Swedenborg's mind was, by 
his high state as to regeneration, — though perhaps not neces- 
sarily to the seventh degree, — opened upward to the Lord. 

7. Illumination. 

Let us now inquire what are the results of such a state of 
regeneration, as regards man's relation to the Lord. What 
new capacities are opened in him ? First, he comes into a 
state of illumination, or illustration. All men do. The 
Writings are very full and unmistakable on this subject: 
" When man is in good, and, from good, in truth, he is raised 
into the Divine light, and. according to the quantity and qual- 
ity of good, into such as is more or less interior." A. C. 9407. 
" The light of truth with a man is altogether according to 
the state of his love. In proportion as the love is kindled, 
the truth shines" (10,201), and, of course, the miud is illu- 
minated. " All illustration is from good." " When there is 
illustration by truth, then there is an appearance as if the 
illustration was from truth, when yet it belongs to the good 
which thus shines through truth." 3094. This so accords 
with our rational intuitions I will not take up the space with 
further citations. We all see how this is; for Swedenborg 
teaches with unmistakable clearness that the Divine Influx is 
the same into all men, — the evil and the good, the regenerate 
and the unregenerate, — just as the influx from the sun is the 
same into fields of weeds and fields of corn ; just as the rains 
fall equally upon the cultivated and the uncultivated portions 
of the earth ; just as life from the brain flows with equal ful- 
ness into the diseased as into the non-diseased organs of the 
body. Regeneration clears the mind of its darkening vapors, 
dispels the clouds, and brings the mind into a state recipient 



40 SWEDENBORG AND THE NEW AGE. 

of the light of heaven. To be in regenerated love and charity 
is to have the spiritual sky clear and transparent, is to be 
upon the spiritual mountain, in the very light of heaven itself, 
■where the Lord — the Lord as the Word, as the very Spirit and 
Life of truth — is " in His glory." Let it be remembered that 
this is not an exceptional state, but that all regenerated men 
are in a state of illustration, but each " altogether according 
to the state of his love ; that is, according to the quantity and 
quality of good in him." Of course the measure of the light 
received — not its intensity — and the results of its reception 
must depend upon the capacity of the mind, upon whether it- 
is broad or narrow, large or small, if I may so speak. We do 
not suppose that a mind of small and limited experience, for 
example, can receive as much light as one of vast experience, 
like that of Swedenborg, nor that the results will be as great. 

8. Perception. 

A second result of such highly regenerated state — and thus 
of illustration — is an "internal perception of truth," and 
" thus revelation from perception." " He who loves truths 
for the sake of truths sees them from the Lord" that is to say, 
from the Word, from the truth itself, which the Lord is. " All 
perception is from celestial love," and all who arrive at the 
celestial state in their regeneration receive perception from the 
Lord. A. C. 1442, 1616. " Perception is the celestial itself 
given by the Lord to those who are in the faith of love." 536. 
" They who are in the spiritual affection of truth are elevated 
into the light of heaven, even so as to perceive their illustra- 
tion from the Lord." A. C. 1183. And this perception of 
truth is internal revelation,— is a revelation to all men in a 
regenerated state and to angels, but, of course, with a differ- 
ence. It is a revelation to them of all that God has to reveal, 
for it is a revelation of Himself, of Himself as the all-creating 
Word, as the all-illuminating Truth. What has God to re- 
veal but Himself as Living Light ? " The Divine Truth from 



GENERAL PRINCIPLES. 41 

the Lord is the only thing from which is everything else." 
9503. What else need He reveal ? What more does the 
man in illustration, thus in the perception of truth from the 
Lord, want? Illuminating truth, thus truth glowing with 
Divine Love, is all that it is possible for any one to receive 
immediately or directly from the Lord. 

9. Understanding and Will. 

Let us not confound a state of perception with the state a 
man is in when his understanding is raised into light in ad- 
vance of his will, for there is an infinite difference between 
them. A man is in perception, or that kind of perception 
which is from illustration, only as a result of regeneration. It is 
true, Swedenborg says, that the " understanding of every man 
may be elevated into the light of heaven and perceive spiritual 
truths when he hears them," but qualifiedly so, that is, " ac- 
cording to the affection of hnoicing and understanding them." 
A. C. 1323. He says that " even devils can understand the 
arcana of wisdom." A. C. 1343. " The understanding can be 
elevated above the lusts of the will." T. C. R. 574. Of course 
man could never see the " way of life" and become regenerated 
if this were not so. Man is mentally so organized that his 
understanding can go before and lead the way. But Sweden- 
borg says that " there are no truths where there is no good," 
and thus no pure genuine light ; and he proves it. For he 
adds, " The reason is, because the Lord never flows immediately 
into truths with man, but mediately by his good ; for good is 
of the will, and the will is the man himself, the understanding- 
being thence produced and formed ; for the understanding is 
so adjoined to the will that what the will loves the under- 
standing sees, and also brings forth into light ; wherefore, if 
the will is not in good, but in evil, then the influx of truth 
from the Lord into the understanding avails nothing ; for it is 
dissipated, because it is not loved ; yea, it is perverted, and 
the truth is falsified ; hence it is manifest why the Lord does 



42 SWEDENBORG AND THE NEW AGE. 

not immediately flow into the understanding of man, except 
so far as the will is in good. The Lord can illustrate the un- 
derstanding of every man, and so flow in with divine truths, 
inasmuch as the faculty of understanding truth is given to 
every man, and this for the sake of his reformation ; but still 
the Lord does not so flow in, because truths do not remain, 
but in proportion as the will is reformed : to illustrate the un- 
derstanding in truths even to faith, except in proportion as the 
will acts as one with it, would also be dangerous ; for man can 
then pervert, adulterate, and profane truths, which exposes him 
to the worst condemnation. Moreover, truths, howsoever they 
are known and understood, if they are not at the same time 
lived, are nothing but inanimate truths ; and truths inanimate 
are as it were statues which are without life. From these 
considerations it may appear, whence it is, that there are no 
truths where there is no good, unless as to form and not as to 
essence." A. E. 730. 

In regard to perception, it is of various degrees and kinds ; 
but that with which Swedenborg was favored was evidently 
that which a man has when he is " in truth from good," and 
which is the result of his state of illustration. Swedenborg 
was in illustration, and therefore in perception as a consequence, 
and he was in revelation from perception. 

10. Revelation from Perception. 
Revelation from perception is what the angels only and re- 
generated men have. This is the kind of revelation that was 
common in the Most Ancient Church, but comparatively rare 
in the degenerating Ancient Church. It is a totally different 
kind of revelation from that made by speech, like the Sacred 
Scriptures, or by visions ; and it requires an entirely different 
state of mind to receive it, It could not possibly have been 
received by those to whom revelation was made in a verbal form, 
not even by Moses and the Prophets. Revelation from per- 
ception is the Word as living light actually shining in the 



GENERAL PRINCIPLES. 43 

mind, as it shines in the minds of angels and good spirits, or 
regenerated men. Revelation from perception is from influx, 
not from dictation ; Sacred Scripture, or verbal revelation, is 
from dictation, but dictation, let us remember, not by the Lord, 
but by angels and good spirits, as they were filled by influx 
from the Lord ; for dictation is a finite act. It is divine truth 
finited down, as it were, into thought and measured out 
in words. Revelation from perception, it is plain, is of a 
more interior kind, for it is actual insight into spiritual prin- 
ciples and causes ; it is a conception of such principles and 
causes in the very light itself of heaven. Revelation from 
verbal dictation is only a description, in words, of scarcely 
more than the gross, materialized effects, as it were, of such 
principles. Revelation from perception is as the restoration 
of the things of sight to the blind, in all their detail of beauty 
and glory, as they appear to perfect vision ; while revelation 
from dictation is as the lame, verbal utterance and description 
of those things to the blind. 

11. Dictation. 

But we are told that Swedenborg positively affirms that 
the spiritual sense of the Word was dictated to him from 
heaven. So he does. But to dictate is to give the very 
words. And if he received the words he wrote from heaven, 
it must have been either from the Lord or from the angels. 
But the Lord never finites truth, which is Divine thought, 
into speech, except through finite agencies, such as men, spirits, 
or angels. But Swedenborg expressly declares that " he never 
received anything concerning the doctrines of the New Church 
from any angel or spirit, but from the Lord alone." What does 
he mean, then, by dictation ? Let him define his own words, 
and he does this clearly and consistently. In speaking of Reve- 
lation from Perception, he says that perception " is a dictate 
through heaven from the Lord flowing into the interiors of 
the thought." A. C. 5121. Again, "Perception, in itself, is 



44 SWEDENBORG AND THE NEW AGE. 

nothing else than a sort, of internal speech ;" "every interior 
impression or dictate, and even conscience itself, is nothing but 
such internal speech." 1822. When perception ceased in the 
Most Ancient Church, there succeeded a kind of dictate called 
conscience. Swedenborg speaks of several kinds of dictate, 
as that of perception, of conscience, of truth, of good. But 
they are each and all an influx from the Lord ; and whether 
they are of one kind or another depends, not at all upon the 
nature of the influx,— for that is unchangeably the same,— 
but upon the state of the recipient. 

12. lIV/o have Revelation from Perception? 
But who have perception ? Swedenborg's teachings on this 
point are unmistakable ; they are often repeated. In fact, his 
whole philosophy of mind in its relation to the Lord makes 
the subject plain, even if he had said nothing specifically about 
it. As shown above from the Writings, they have revelation 
from perception " who are in good, and from good in truth." 
Revelation from perception is made when they who are in 
such a state read the Word. 5121. The Word reveals itself 
by Holy Influx to all who are in such a state of Good and 
Truth while they are devoutly reading it. 8971. And there 
is nothing else to be revealed but the Word, or the Lord as 
the Word. When the Word is revealed all is revealed ; God 
and heaven and all things in heaven are revealed. To such 
persons the Word reveals itself in its genuine sense,— that is, 
as living light, 10,323. Such influx of the Word as light,' 
and consequent illustration, are actual elevation ioto heaven 
among the angels, and communication there from the Lord. 
10,330. But communication from the Lord is nothing else 
than communication from Him as the Word, thus as an influx 
of living light. Communication from the Lord is never in 
audible speech, except to the merely natural man, and not to 
him even, except as the light is finited into speech through 
the finiting medium of angels or spirits. Though there is a 



GENERAL PRINCIPLES. 45 

sense in which natural men may, as regards their intellectual 
part, be raised into the light of heaven, yet no one who is not 
" in truth from good" can have the kind of perception of 
which we are speaking, and thus revelation from perception. 
No one can understand the true spirit and philosophy of Swe- 
denborg's writings without being undoubtingly convinced of 
this. 

13. Formulated Truth. 

Formulated Truth — that is to say, Truth finited into verbal 
statements, verbal precepts, principles, or doctrines — never did, 
never can, come immediately from the Lord ; they come only 
through Uniting agencies or instruments. And there are no 
such finiting mediums between the man in a state of " revela- 
tion from perception" and the Lord. A man in such a state 
sees truth, not in its finited and verbalized form, in its form 
as of a statement, precept, or doctrine, but sees it as light from 
the Divine, — perceives his own illustration from the Lord (as 
above). Swedenborg mentions his own case AS AN example, 
and not as exceptional : " It was given me," he says, " to see 
the illustration, and from it to perceive distinctly what comes 
from the Lord and what from the angels." 1183. What came 
from the Lord to Swedenborg was precisely, in kind, what 
comes to all men, namely, illuminating truth, or truth as light ; 
just as what comes from the sun to one plant is precisely, in 
kind, what comes to all plants. ' What Swedenborg wrote was 
finitely formulated truth ; he never wrote any other kind of truth. 
But where was such truth formulated but in his own mind ? and 
how formulated but exactly according as his miud was im- 
pressed by the influx of truth as living light ? And how is 
mind thus impressed but according to its purity, its developed 
capacities, its stores of experiences, etc. ? It is not every mind 
that can formulate truth, especially in its highest verbal re- 
vealment. A mind must have peculiar gifts and be specially 
prepared for this office ; and even then it is only " spiritual 
truth" that can be measured down into a verbal form : " celes- 



46 SWEDENBORQ AND THE NEW AGE. 

tial truth" is ineffable. S. D. 4671, et passim. That nothing 
is received from the Lord — nothing whatever — but influx of 
living truth, influx of the very ." spirit and life" of the Word, 
and not verbal truth, not finited or formulated ideas, princi- 
ples, or doctrines, is confirmed by the following passage, among 
numerous others, — namely, " By revelation is meant illustration 
when the Word is read, and in such case perception ; for they 
who are in good, aud desire truth, are so taught from the 
Word," — that is, by the Lord. And this is the way, and the 
only way, in which Swedenborg was " taught by the Lord while 
reading the Word;" it was by illustration and perception, and 
not by the Lord's giving him already formulated ideas, prin- 
ciples, or doctrines, much less verbal statements of truth, as 
some seem to suppose. Neither Swedeuborg, nor any other 
man or angel, ever received anything directly or immediately 
from the Lord but infinite or unfinited truth, truth as light 
shining in the mind; for this, as repeatedly stated before, is 
all that the Lord has, or ever had, or ever need to have, to 
give any one. 

14. The Writings. 

And did Swedenborg give what he so joyously and so abun- 
dantly received? Never. This was impossible. Truth, as 
light, could not even shine through him as natural light 
through a transparent medium. And this is an important 
fact to be noted. Truth became finite the moment the Divine 
Influx impinged upon the walls of his mind. He could not 
be the medium of truth as light; he could not transfer it as 
Divine Truth. He could give it, could speak it and write it, 
only as finited, formulated, verbal truth ; he could communicate 
it only in the form of talks about or descriptions of truth ; in 
other words, he could only convey to others the thoughts, ideas, 
principles suggested and formed in his own mind as illumi- 
nated by truth as light ; just as, however purely you may re- 
ceive the sunlight, you cannot communicate it ; you can only 
talk about it and about things illuminated by it. Swedenborg's 



GENERAL PRINCIPLES. 47 

writings are not genuine truth, — teachings are not genuine 
truth, — they cannot be, any more than bottles are wine, or 
than surfaces receiving and dividing or formulating light into 
distinct shades and colors are the light, or rather than such 
colors are the light. They are only verbal expressions of 
truth, or suggestive mediums or formularies of truth. And 
such formularies are not Divine any more than the purple 
clusters produced from the vine through the medium of the 
branches are the vine, or are the life of the vine. The 
Writings are rather as finger-points to show the way to the 
Divine, or how we may come into a state to receive more 
purely the Divine. They are not designed to give men truth, 
but to' lead them in the way of truth, to tell them how to be 
regenerated, and thus how to have their minds cleansed and 
purified, so that they can receive the truth already flowing 
into them without perverting it, and thus receive it as truth. 
The Writings are; the guides, as it were. Yet we regard 
Swedenborg's statements as true statements or doctrines of 
truth, and of priceless value as such. His writings are not 
even recipient vessels of truth, as mind is. We can receive 
no truth from them or through them, as we can from the 
Word. They are in no sense the Word, or like the Word. 
The Word, and that alone, is truth. 

It was not because Swedenborg was a servant of the Lord, 
— we are all equally his servants, — nor because he had a spe- 
cial mission, — we each have equally a special mission, — that 
he made such true statements or teachings' or doctrines of 
truth, but because he received truth so purely, thus because he 
wrote in such pure light of truth. 

Swedenborg was not exceptional in his relation to truth,, 
thus to the Lord, but in the measure which he received of it, 
rather in the purity, thus heavenly brightness, in which he 
received it ; and this is the reason, and not because the Lord 
gave him more than other men, why his writings are so 
exceptionally truthful as verbal expressions of truth. 



48 SWEDENBORG AND THE NEW AGE. 

15. Truth not Transferable. 

Swedenborg was simply a man, like other men, in his rela- 
tion to truth ; he was simply a recipient of it, just as we are ; 
it flowed into him just as it flows into us, and for the same 
reason, — flowed into him as light into the eye or life into the 
body, but not to be transferred to other men. Can light be 
transferred from one eye to another, or life from one body to 
another ? You cannot transcribe truth. There is an infinite 
difference between truth in Swedenborg — or as it flowed into 
him — and truth in his writings. Swedenborg is not a medium 
of truth to us ; he is not between the Lord and us ; neither 
are his writings. We do not look to him or go to his writings 
for truth, as we do to a well for water ; they contain none. 
We might as well go to a treatise on light, or to verbal state- 
ments about light, for light. Truth cannot be bottled up 
like wine. It is truth as it flows into you, but not as it rests 
in you or after it has passed through you, — if such resting or 
such passage were conceivable. What is light, the natural 
symbol and representative of truth, when confined in a vessel 
or when it is brought to a state of rest? Is it anything? 
What is light when finited and formulated in words ? Is it 
light? Is it anything like light, except that it gives the 
blind man some sort of an idea through the ear of what he 
cannot see with the eye ? 

Such is the relation of Swedenborg's writings to truth, — 
real truth. They are a needful substitute for truth to the 
spiritually blind. They are truth speaking, as it were, when 
it cannot shine by reason of our blindness. Rather they are 
an explanation of truth, or a verbal presentation of principles 
of truth, which, if not spiritually blind, we might see, and 
see in their fulness and glory. They are, in their relation to 
truth, what a description of a landscape to a blind man is to 
the light by which, if not blind, he might see things ineffable 
and full of beauty. 



GENERAL PRINCIPLES. 49 

16. The Writings. — How Useful. 

Thus these writings are of vast importance to us because 
we are blind. But let us not for that reason consider them 
an embodiment of all truth, or of all the Lord has to give 
men. and just as if the Lord could put His truth, any of 
His truth, into words at all. They are of very great use to 
us in aiding us, by explaining to us the way, to come into 
states in which we may receive truth, in i:s living brightness, 
from the Lord. But let us remember that we are living under 
the same spiritual sun that poured its light into Swedenborg's 
mind, and that we are all receiving, each according to his 
measure and state, just as he received. We are not dependent 
upon Swedenborg, or upon any verbal statement whatever, for 
Truth, but, just as Swedenborg was, upon the Lord alone. We 
may have read Swedenborg much or little or not at all ; all the 
Truth we have received has come by influx from the Lord 
alone. What we get from Swedenborg aids in giving Truth 
from the Lord practical outline and form. Truth, without 
true doctrinal statement, would be indefinite and vague. 
Here we see the use, the very great importance, of Swe- 
denborg's writings ; here we see their true place and use in 
relation to Truth itself. 

17. Not all the Truth. 

But we very greatly err, so far as we imagine that Sweden- 
borg has furnished all or the only formulated vessels of truth. 
On the contrary, every true life elaborates such vessels. The 
Sacred Scriptures furnish them ; so does science or a knowl- 
edge of God, — that is, of Truth in nature. The thoughts of 
some men flow spontaneously, as it were, into true expressions, 
and to such men an external formula would be only an em- 
barrassment. Other men, who have equally keen perceptions 
of what is true, cannot think but as aided by already formu- 
lated vessels of thought. The former do not care to read 



50 SWEDENBORG AND THE NEW AGE. 

Swedenborg or to know the ultimate expression of others' 
thoughts ; the latter are persistent and loving students of all 
that Swedenborg has written. Both are admirers of Sweden- 
borg and of his writings, but for different reasons. 

There is every variety of mind in the reception of truth 
and in its operation and effects, just as there is every variety 
of plant in the reception and operation of the sunlight. We 
live in an age or at the time of that peculiar phase of developing 
humanity when universal mind is in a new receptive state, not 
when the Lord is doing anything different or anything more 
than in any former age. 

There is, I say, an infinite difference between truth and 
a verbal statement of truth. True, men are in the habit of 
speaking of such statements as truths ; thus, of calling true 
precepts, doctrines, or teachings, truths. Swedenborg's writ- 
ings are truth or contain truths only in this sense. 

18. Truth. 

For what is truth, real truth ? It is substantial, living efflu- 
ence from the Lord. It is, indeed, the Lord in His goings 
forth of Himself, as it were, from Himself. It is the all- 
creating, spiritual radiance of God and from God as the Life 
and Source of all that is. It is the " Word" — not as Sacred 
Scripture, but as that of which Sacred Scripture is only the 
basis and continent, the outer garment, the finited, verbal 
statement ; it is that Word by which and out of which " all 
things were made," and without which " was not anything 
made that was made." Truth is Life: "In Him [the Word] 
was life." Truth is Light : " And the Life was the light of 
men." Truth floics into the mind as the brain-life or the 
heart-life into the body, and it gives life to the mind as such 
fluids give life to the body. Mind actually lives on truth — 
truth as the form and manifestation of love — as the body lives 
on its fluids of life. Truth ilium i 'nates the mind as the sun- 
light the world. It is by truth alone that mind is enabled to 



GENERAL PRINCIPLES. 51 

think and perceive and produce results, just as it is by the 
sunlight alone that the earth is made productive. Such is 
truth : it is God ; and all the God we know or need to know 
anything about. Christ was Truth [God the Word] manifest 
— brought forth to view — to human perception on a lower 
plane. Truth in the mind is God in the mind. 

Can any of these things be said of the Writings, or of any 
other verbal teachings or doctrines, however true they may be ? 
Are they truth, then ? Do they ever contain truth ? Are any 
of their doctrines or teachings truth? Are they anything 
more tban finite statements or verbal expressions of truth? 
but statements or expressions made in the very light itself of 
truth, — which is to be " instructed," " dictated to," by the Lord 
Himself, the Lord as Truth itself, — thus they are true state- 
ments. They are a rich storehouse of such statements, thus 
of truths in this sense of the word. And this, it is plain, is 
all that they are. There is no real " life" in them, no real 
" light" in them. They only tell us how, by living according 
to them as true teachings, we may come into a state to receive 
real truth as life and light by influx from the Lord, which is 
the only way to receive real truth. 

Such are the Writings and such their relation to Truth, 
thus to the Lord. What is their relation to men ? Are they 
true statements of truth to men ? 

19. Authority to the Man of this Age. 

Here is exactly the point : Are they true statements, — not 
absolutely, but relatively? This depends upon the reader's 
state. Even though absolutely true, yet to some men they 
are false; and the man of this age, of this phase of develop- 
ing humanity, is to be his own judge. No Grand Sanhedrim 
or ecclesiastical Council is going to decide the question for 
him. The Word, Christ, Truth, — Truth as he sees it, — is 
his only " Rabbi." Matt. ii. 3, 8. And this is one of the great 



52 SWEDENBORG AND THE NEW AGE. 

and a feature that seems to be entirely overlooked and ignored 
by some writers on the nature of Swedenborg's writings as 
" authority." It is not literal truth, not any verbal statement 
of truth whatever, but truth itself, — truth as a living influx into 
his own mind, — that the real man of this age is going to ac- 
knowledge as authority, and influx as qualified by his own, not 
another's, state of reception. It is the Jew and the Solifidian 
alone — those who are in a relatively undeveloped, childhood 
state — that need verbal authority, the " Thus-saith-the-Lord" 
form of truth. But such men do not really belong to this 
age ; they are dwellers in the lingering shadow of the past. 
To such, Swedenborg's writings are true or untrue, — just as 
has been the case with the Jew and the Christian in regard to the 
Bible, — according to external evidence, according as they are 
persuaded that he was a true man, and therefore " told the 
truth," or wrote what the Lord told him to write. With such 
men, therefore, the question is not " What is truth?" but " What 
do the Writings say?" It is not living truth as it flows into 
the mind and produces rational conviction, but verbal truth as 
substantiated by adequate authority, that is their " Master," — 
not truth as it comes directly from the Lord, or is the Lord, 
in their own minds, but as it comes externally formulated and 
clothed by other minds. 

20. Evidence. 

Thus it is plain that whether Swedenborg's writings are true 
statements of truth to men depends upon the character of the 
men, and that they will be regarded as true, or untrue, ac- 
cording to the state of mind. Formalists or literalists — such 
is the character of some minds — must have evidence about 
them that " thus saith the Lord." And they are constantly 
looking for such evidence, and they are delighted with it when 
they find it. There is every variety of this kind of mind, 
from the ancient Israelite down to the literalistic reader of the 
" Heavenly Doctrines." Mystery was all-sufficient evidence to 



GENERAL PRINCIPLES. 53 

the Israelite ; a miracle, to the " Christian ;" to the man in a 
transition state for the new age, but who has not yet entirely 
outgrown the old, a kind of rational conviction of the Divine 
authority of the messenger is necessary ; whereas, with the true 
man of the age, the message itself is all that he loill regard as 
of any account, and this even will have weight only as wit- 
nessed to by the internal Rabbi of the mind itself, — Christ as 
the inflowing life or Spirit of truth. To such a man the 
Writings will be true, not because Swedenborg says so, not 
because of any supposed evidence that the Lord says so 
through him, but because he is in a state to receive, and is ac- 
tually receiving, qualifiedly, the very Spirit of truth itself, of 
which the Writings are only a united, verbal statement. No 
external say-so evidence will weigh a straw or excite a thought 
with such a man. lie will not care to ask what was Sweden- 
borg's authority, or whether his statements are worthy of be- 
lief. The man of this new age, the man of the real New 
Jerusalem, for whose use alone the Writings are designed, will 
measure them by the truth actually flowing into him, and not 
by what Swedenborg or anybody else says about them ; arid the 
only test to him of their fallibility or infallibility will be that of 
such inflowing truth, — if it should occur to him to ask even 
whether they are infallibly true or not. To every such man 
the Writings must be true or false according as he himself 
sees them, in the light of the real Spirit of truth in his own 
mind. If he does not thus see them as true, you cannot 
by any evidence whatever prove them to him to be true. 
Dreadful exhibitions of Divine wrath and power, as with the 
Israelite, or signs and wonders, as with the earliest Christians, 
or rational arguments, though never so logical and convincing, 
as with the scientist and philosopher, are not the kind of evi- 
dence demanded by the real man of this age, though they have 
had their mission, and an important one, in the past, and still 
have with a certain class of people. Of what avail is it for 
you, though possessed of all the gifts of the highest angel, of 



54 SWEDENBORG AND THE NEW AGE. 

what avail is it for councils, though consisting of men of such 
gifts, to tell a man who has the real manhood of this age de- 
veloping within him, that this or that is true.? He has a higher 
authority — Christ, Truth — as a witness and monitor in his own 
mind, whose testimony he can hold as subordinate to that of 
no man or body of men. Even though you were to satisfy him 
that Swedenborg was the infallible mouthpiece of the Lord, as 
some believe, it would be of no avail ; his utterances must be 
judged and received or rejected according as witnessed to by 
the Rabbi within. You do him, therefore, no good service by 
proving, even if it were possible, that Swedenborg's writings 
are infallible. He is of an entirely different genius from either 
the Israelite or the Papist, and is capable of higher testimony, 
of being shown plainly of the Father, — " even the Spirit 
of Truth . . . that dwelleth with you and shall be IN you," 
an inner counsellor, teacher, and enlightener. How is it that 
men professedly of this new age have so mistaken the genius 
and wants and prerogatives of its manhood? This is an in- 
ternal phase of humanity. The truth that comes with " au- 
thority" comes in an internal way ; it is not formulated truth. 
No man, in any sense, stands between another man and the 
real Master: "All ye are brethren." The man of this age is 
going to drink from the living fountain, as Swedenborg, its 
precursor, herald, and great exemplar, did, and not, as in the 
past, from finited statements of truth. 

21. The Man of the Age and the Writings. 

The important question presents itself, then, What is the 
position of the real man of this age in his relation to Swe- 
denborg's writings ? I answer, Very similar to what it is in 
his relation to other writings. In fact, where is the difference, 
if he acknowledges no verbal statement of truth, however 
true in itself, as authoritative truth ? For no one is going to 
acknowledge these writings as true except so far as they are 
true to him, true as he sees them. And this can be said of all 



GENERAL PRINCIPLES. 55 

writings. And he can see them as true only according to his 
reception of corresponding living truth by influx. So different 
is the man of this age from the man of any preceding age. 
The witness of truth is, I say, within and not outside. Swe- 
denborg's writings, in a wonderful degree, bear the impress of 
this witness. He evidently wrote them in its light, thus by 
its " dictation ;" just as the true scientist writes in the light 
and by the dictation of scientific truth ; just, indeed, as Swe- 
denborg wrote as a scientist. 



CHAPTER II. 

SWEDENBORG'S RELATION TO THE LORD. 

1. Inspiration. 
Much has been said about Swedenborg's inspiration. But 
wbat is meant by his inspiration ? how was he inspired ? was 
he inspired in any different sense from that in which all re- 
generated men are inspired ? Swedenborg gives a plenty of 
unmistakable instruction on this subject. And what he says 
of himself is clearly intended, in most cases, as illustrative of 
general principles as applicable to all men in similar states of 
regeneration ; as, for example, where he says, " it was given 
me to know by experience," " I know from my own case," 
" this was granted me to know as a most certain thing by daily 
experience and reflection," and the like. Passages are often 
met with in the Writings which relate to Swedenborg's own 
experience and history in his qualifications for, and perform- 
ance of, the duties of his office. And these, to a superficial 
reader, or to one insensible to the true spirit and philosophy 
of the Writings, would seem to indicate that Swedenborg was 
in a certain extraordinary, not to say miraculous, manner, — 
different from all other regenerated men, — an instrument, 
somewhat as Moses and the Prophets were, in the hands of 
the Lord — a " quill," as expressed by one — to write the doc- 
trines of the New Church. But the extracts show no such 
thing, encourage no such view, except to the intense literalist 
who is blind to the true scope and philosophy of Swedenborg's 
teachings as a whole. 
56 



SWEDENBORG' S RELATION TO THE LORD. 57 

2. Of Two Kinds. 

There are plainly two kinds of inspiration, — one external, 
the other internal. The Bible was written by men externally 
inspired, by unregenerated or merely natural men, thus by ex- 
ternal men. Swedenborg was internally inspired ; for he was, 
as is acknowledged, in illustration, and thus in " revelation 
from perception ;" and this, as abundantly shown in the 
Writings, is what is meant by " internal inspiration." No 
one will deny that Swedenborg was gifted with this kind of 
inspiration ; but in this he was like all other men who are 
" in the good of love to the Lord," or " in good and thence in 
truth," which is an indispensable condition of such inspiration. 
In such inspiration, therefore, his case was not exceptional, 
except so far as his regeneration to such state of love was 
exceptional, for all men in such state of " good of love to the 
Lord" are internally inspired. Nothing is more clearly taught 
by Swedenborg. Thus it is plain that Swedenborg was in- 
ternally inspired, not because of any special gift by the Lord, 
but because, and solely because, he was in a state of " good of 
love to the Lord." And for the same reason, and for no other 
reason, was he in illustration, and thus " in revelation from 
perception," while writing an explanation of the internal sense 
of the Word. He was inspired or was in revelation from 
perception, we insist, in the sense, and only in the sense, in 
which all men, in such good of love, are inspired, or are in 
revelation from perception ; for influx of Divine Truth into 
such men is, in all cases, as we have shown, " revelation from 
perception," or " internal inspiration," but with a difference in 
measure and degree and results, of course, determined by the 
character as to capacity, condition, stores of knowledge, ex- 
periences, and the like, of the recipient vessels, no two of 
which are just alike. 

4 



58 SWEDENBORQ AND THE NEW AGE. 

3. The Lord's Part in the Writings. 

Now what we want to know is specifically what constituted 
the Lord's part and what Swedenborg's part as regards the 
Writings. First, the Lord's part, — that is to say, we want to 
know what the Lord specifically gave Swedenborg or did for 
him as His " servant" while he was writing. Did He give 
him, or did He do for him, anything whatever different from 
what He gives to or does for other men, all men ? We 
answer, No. For, as most clearly shown in the Writings, 
nothing, nothing whatever, no influence, no power, no opera- 
tion, not even the form, the essence, or the shadow of any- 
thing, comes from the Lord but an effluence of Himself, — of 
Himself as the Word, of Himself as Love, Spirit, Life, Truth. 
He has nothing else to give, nothing whatever, but such 
effluence. And He does nothing, absolutely nothing, but give 
such effluence ; just as the sun does nothing but give its 
radiance, its effluence of itself; just as the vine does nothing 
for the branches but give them an effluence of and from its 
life, or give itself in the form of such effluence. The Lord 
does nothing, absolutely nothing, in the creation or evolution 
of each and all His works, — and whether physical or spiritual, 
— but what He does as simply and exclusively the result of 
such effluence in its operation as influx or influence; and such 
Optra ti< >ii must of necessity and invariably depend upon the 
■recipient of such influx. God's power, His wisdom, His 
providence, all His attributes, are confined to the operation of 
such effluence and influx. He has no finitely purposive in- 
fluence, no arbitrary power, as man has ; no magic power. 
He has no hand, no " mighty arm," none but the Word, — that 
is, none but Truth, Truth as the form of His own life, by which 
to execute. He does nothing as man does, not even as the 
good man does. He has no such power as man has. The sun 
is the great exemplar of the operation of His power. And 
how does the sun operate ? purely as an influx of itself or of its 



SWEDENBORO'S RELATION TO THE LORD. 59 

own substance. It works in secret, entirely concealed from 
view ; works silently, works organifically, and little by little, 
and always exactly according to conditions, producing woody 
fibre, leaves, or flowers, producing sour or sweet, one color or 
another, a noble or ignoble plant or tree, exactly according to 
the recipient conditions modifying its operation. It is pre- 
cisely so with the Lord in all that He does or ever did. He 
works as the sunbeam works, or as the living principle in the 
seed or in the egg, which is from Him, works to create a 
plant or a bird. And this is the way, and the only way, in 
which He works in men and for men. He works as life, and 
only as life works; for He is Life, Life itself; and all His 
attributes are attributes simply of Himself as Life. Sweden- 
borg has explained this to axiomatic clearness. This is the 
way, and the only way, in which the Lord ever worked for or 
ever in any sense or manner taught or influenced Swedenborg 
in his writings ; it was as inflowing Life, Life whose essence 
is love and whose form of operation and manifestation is truth. 
Hence the Lord's part, and His only part, in those Writings 
was in the one only normal, unchangeable operation of the 
influx of Divine Truth which he gave Swedenborg. Yet, 
strange to say, men often speak as if the Lord exercised some 
other influence over Swedenborg, or as if He influenced him 
in some other way, or in some additional way, than by the 
natural and spontaneous operation of influx of Himself; they 
speak as if the Lord made Swedenborg an exception to a uni- 
versal and unchangeable law in this respect, which law is, as 
before stated, that the operation of influx must, by stern 
necessity, always and invariably be according to recipient state 
and conditions. They speak, for example, of truth being " in- 
stilled into Swedenborg by the Lord Himself" ! And this 
peculiar, exceptional, instilling process seems to be what some 
understand by " internal inspiration ;" and to substantiate this 
view they cite what Swedenborg says about the Lord's " dic- 
tating to him," " commanding him," " teaching him," " lead- 



60 SWEDENBORG AND THE NEW AGE. 

ing him." and the like, without regard to the necessary and 
only meaning of these phrases when considered in the light 
of the spirit and philosophy of Swedenborg's writings. Just 
as if the Lord could and did do for Swedenborg something 
outside or independent of, or in addition to, the natural opera- 
tion of His influx according to state and conditions ! and just 
as if it were not equally as necessary to consider what Swe- 
denborg means, according to his own philosophy, as to hear 
what he is regarded as " authoritatively" and " infallibly" say- 
ing. And here, we think, lies the fatal mistake which has led 
to such strange views about Swedenborg, and about his writings 
as " the Lord's writings." 

4. "Instilled." 

But if truth was instilled into Swedenborg's mind, it was 
truth in what form ? Was it in the form of ideas, principles, 
words, doctrines? That would be external inspiration, and 
must come through a Uniting medium, through the mind of 
some spirit or angel; for ideas, doctrines, etc., are finited 
things ; even doctrines are only truth finited into verbal teach- 
ings; are truth finited, or limited and accommodated, in a cer- 
tain conceivable form, by the processes of finite thought. Doc- 
trines could not come from the Lord in such finite form. And 
yet Swedenborg says that he " was instructed by no spirit or 
angel" — that is, by no finite being — in his explanations of the 
Word. And, as we have seen, nothing comes from the Lord 
but Divine Truth, and to the regenerated man it comes only 
as an influx of Light. The finiting and formulating process 
into ideas, principles, and doctrines must have taken place in 
the finite faculties of Swedenborg's own mind. When he says, 
therefore, that " the internal sense was dictated to him by the 
Lord," that he "was taught by the Lord," that his books 
were " written from the Lord [a Domino'] through him," and 
makes use of other like expressions, he certainly cannot mean 
what the rigid literalist would make him mean. Such expres- 



SWEDENBORG'S RELATION TO THE LORD. 61 

sions must be interpreted by doctrine, and interpreted in such 
a manner as not to militate against the unity and harmony of 
acknowledged general principles. Swedenborg certainly does 
not contradict, in his own experience, universal and unchange- 
able principles. He never makes the laws of God's relation 
to men different, as applied to himself, from what they are as 
relating to other men. Swedenborg clearly shows the mean- 
ing of the above expressions by the way he uses them in other 
connections. For example, " dictate" — which literally means 
" to declare with authority," or to give verbal command, or to 
speak in words — does not mean, when predicated of the Lord, 
to give either words or finited thoughts, principles, or teach- 
ings ; it is only a certain result of the operation of the influx 
of Divine Truth into finite vessels and' under certain condi- 
tions. Thus Swedenborg says, " It was dictated in a wonder- 
ful manner in the thought, and the thought was led to an 
understanding of these words, and the idea was fixedly held in 
each expression as if detained by heavenly power: so this 
revelation took place to the conscious senses. By the permis- 
sion of God Messiah, other revelations, which are many, will 
be spoken of elsewhere." Adv. 7167. Swedenborg had been 
speaking of a certain revelation to him. " They who are in 
good know from good what is in Divine Truth," " for it is to 
them a dictate, and guides them." A. C. 4715-88. " In- 
spiration is not dictation, but is influx from the Divine." 
9094. Genuine perception is also called a dictate flowing 
through heaven from the Lord into the interiors of the 
thought. 5121. Conscience is a kind of dictate from the 
Lord that a thing is true. 895. And do finited thoughts, 
ideas, or principles flow down through heaven from the Lord ? 
Rather, does not Divine Truth from the Lord take such finited 
forms in the finite and finiting mind itself into which it flows ? 
So, also, such expressions as the following — upon which 
some seem to put an altogether too literal construction — must 
be interpreted in the light of Swedenborg's general teachings 



62 SWEDE NBORG AND THE NEW AGE. 

on God's relation to man : " The Lord alone taught me ;" " the 
man who is led by the Lord is taught by Him from day to 
day what he is to do and to speak, and also what he is to 
preach and to write." That is to say, all men so led are so 
taught, and not Swedenborg alone. Again he says, " I was 
instructed by no spirit and by no angel, but by the Lord 
alone." True, such expressions as the following, " A revela- 
tion from His mouth," " by command," as predicated of the 
Lord, and other like expressions used by Swedenborg, seem to 
imply the use of finite vocal organs by the Lord as the means 
of their utterance. He has such organs in potency , or in first 
principles, or we should not have them. But has He them in 
actual, finited form ? " By the Divine speech," Swedenborg 
says, " is meant the Divine Truth proceeding from the Lord's 
Divine Human." And " the Divine Truth proceeding from 
the Lord cannot be heard nor perceived by any one except by 
mediations ;" and " the ultimate mediation is by the spirit 
who is with man, who flows in either into his thought or by a 
living voice." A. C. 6996. But there was no such media- 
tion in Swedenborg's case while explaining the internal sense 
of the Word ; for he says that he " was instructed by no spirit 
or angel, but by the Lord alone while reading the Word." 
And this shows, again, that Swedenborg received nothing 
whatever from the Lord but an influx of Divine Truth, and 
this in no other form than of such Truth as Light in the mind, 
as is the case with all regenerated men. And yet Swedenborg 
not unfrequently speaks of such influx as " Divine speech ;" but 
he also says that it infinitely transcends the tongues of angels, 
and of course it must the tongues of men. 

5. Swedenborg's Part. 

It would be a very easy matter to prove to the liferalist, by 
Swedenborg's own words, that his writings are the " Lord's 
writings." In fact, some do actually claim that, " in those 
writings which contain the doctrines of the internal sense of 



SWEDENBORG'S RELATION TO THE LORD. 63 

the Word of God there is not a single expression that has not 
been written by the Lord through Swedenborg !" And this 
claim is made even for the "Adversaria" and the "Spiritual 
Diary" ! Swedenborg must, therefore, be proved to be either an 
infinitely pure medium, — such as the highest angels are not, — 
thus a part of God, as the branch is of the vine, or, in some 
sense, a perfectly jussive instrument, like a pen, or like a com- 
pletely controlled amanuensis. And the following from S. D. 
2*790 has been cited to substantiate this view: " To-day it was 
given me to know that . . . language follows from the thought 
according to the ideas of thought, and that language is a natu- 
ral consequence which follows in order;" and then the infer- 
ence is made, " If Swedenborg's language ' followed according 
to the ideas of his thought, being ' their natural consequence,' 
the inspiration of the Lord must have been continued even 
into the very words that Swedenborg wrote." Then the 
converse must be true : if the words of Swedenborg's writings 
are the Lord's, " the ideas of his thought" arc the Lord's as a 
necessary inference. But ideas also, like words, are finite 
things. And such finite things cannot be predicated of the 
Lord. They are exclusively and finitely human. Inspiration 
on the Lord's part is simply influx of Divine Truth ; on man's 
part, perception. The result is, first, " revelation from percep- 
tion," and then "ideas of thought;" and these are formed by 
the action and according to the condition of human faculty as 
a recipient of such influx. Ideas of thought never flow in 
from the Lord, any more than plants and animals flow in from 
the sun to the earth. Finiting and formulating human faculty 
must always, of necessity, intervene between the Divine Influx 
and the words that follow " in order" as a " natural conse- 
quence" according to the " ideas of thought" which result from 
such influx. Such human faculty is just as absolutely neces- 
sary to the formation of inflowing living truth into verbal truth 
as the organism of the tree is to the formation of the sunlight, 
and the elements of earth, air, and water into flowers and 



64 SWEDENBORG AND THE NEW AGE. 

fruit; or as the mechanism of the hand is to the reduction of 
formless material into the form of a watch or a steam-enaine. 
And such human faculty, however highly regenerated, must be 
relatively impure and imperfect; must, therefore, so far, be a 
limiting and qualifying measure and medium. Even the 
" angels are impure in the sight of God ;" even « in heaven 
there is continual purification ;" " it is impossible for any angel 
even, by any means, to arrive at absolute perfection to eter- 
nity." The angels even are, therefore, in relative obscurity in 
their perceptions ; and even the regenerate man's perceptions 
are still more obscure so long as he lives in the body. This is 
confirmed by the following from A. C. 2367 : " When the 
man who is in the good of love and charity passes into the 
other life, he comes from an obscure life into a clearer one, as 
from a kind of night into day, . . . till he comes at length to 
the light in which the angels are, whose light of intelligence 
and wisdom is ineffable ; the very light [lumen] itself in which 
man is respectively, is, as ifrwere, dark ;" and by this, from 
D. L. W. 257, " Human wisdom, which is natural as long as man 
lives in the natural world, cannot on any consideration be raised 
into angelic wisdom, but only into a certain image of it." And 
Swedenborg acknowledges that " there was a change of state 
in him into the celestial kingdom in an image;" thus that he 
was raised only into a certain image of angelic wisdom. " In- 
ternal inspiration," or "revelation from perception," is the 
gift only of one who is " in truth from good." Yet it is some- 
times claimed that Swedenborg's perception did not correspond 
to his state as to good, thus that it " did not depend upon 
his regeneration," but that truth was "instilled into him by the 
Lord Himself," and this because Swedenborg was, in a certain 
sense, « separated from his body" only « as to the intellectual 
part of his mind, and not as to his will part." And it is this 
instilling process that, strange to say, is called internal inspira- 
tion. Just as if the Lord actually manipulated the influx of 
Divine Truth into Swedenborg in some extraordinary way, 



SWEDENBORG'S RELATION TO THE LORD. G5 

making his case thereby a peculiar and exceptional one ! Just 
as if it were in the nature or power of the Divine influx — 
which is all that the Lord gives or does for man — to do this ! 
You might just as sensibly speak of the Sun's resorting to the 
expediency of some such instilling process to produce a certain 
desired extraordinary kind of fruit. If Swedenborg anywhere 
speaks of any kind of inspiration as the result of any such ex- 
traordinary instilling on the part of the Lord, let us not make 
Swedenborg so inconsistent with himself as to believe that he 
means anything like what such language obviously implies. 

6. His Partial Separation from the Body. 

But let us inquire what is really meant by the following 
clause from the " Coronis," which is calculated to mislead the 
novitiate reader of Swedenborg in regard to his state of in- 
spiration and the cause of such inspiration : " These revela- 
tions are not miracles, since every man is, as to his spirit, in 
the spiritual world without separation from his body in the 
natural world, but I with a certain (quodam) separation, but 
only as to the intellectual part of my mind, but not as to the 
voluntary part." S. D. Ap., p. 169. 

All men while in the natural world are at the same time in 
the spiritual world, but not consciously so. Swedenborg's case 
was an exceptional one. What made it so ? He was at the same 
time consciously in both worlds. How ? Why, by a certain 
separation as to his intellectual part which was, at the same time- 
that he was in the natural world, consciously in the spiritual 
world ; he, unlike other men, had the gift of spiritual vision. 
This is all that we can make of the words, " a certain separa- 
tion as to his intellectual part." This is all that the phrase, 
even in itself, justifies; and the philosophy of the Writings ab- 
solutely forbids any other meaning. " It has been granted me 
to be at the same time in natural light and in spiritual, . . . 
and thereby to see the wonderful things of heaven, to be among 
the angels like one of them, and at the same time to imbibe 
4* 



66 SWEDENBORQ AND THE NEW AGE. 

truths in light'' (idem, 157), which implies a " certain separa- 
tion as to his intellectual part," — that is, intromission by con- 
scious spiritual vision into heaven, without which he could not 
have seen its wonderful things nor been among the angels as 
one of them. 

This in no sense implies any separation of Swedenborg's intel- 
lectual part from his voluntary part. Good in the regenerated 
will was still the " very vital fire" by which the intellect 
was illustrated, for such regenerated will is the only possible 
recipient of all illuminating, immediate influx from the Divine. 
" The truth which proceeds immediately from the Divine enters 
into man's will, this is its way ; but the truth which proceeds 
mediately from the Divine enters into man's understanding ;" and 
" conjunction" of the two — namely, truth in the will and truth in 
the understanding — " cannot take place unless the will and the 
understanding act as one — i.e., unless the will will the good and 
the understanding confirm it by the truth." A. C. 7056. And 
such conjunction, we are taught by the most unequivocal 
statements in the Writings, is an indispensable condition of 
" revelation from perception," or " internal inspiration." You 
might, therefore, as well think of light without heat, which is 
its very essence, or of form without substance, as think of such 
-perception or inspiration without love in the will. " When 
there is illustration by truth there is an appearance as if it was 
from truth, but it belongs to the good which thus shines 
through the truth." " The Lord" — i.e., the Divine Truth — 
" flows in and is present with a man in his good. ... It is 
thought that the Lord is present in the truth of what is called 
faith ; but He is not present in truth without good." " The 
light of truth with a man is altogether according to the state 
of his love." " Illustration and apperception cannot exist 
unless there is affection or love, which is spiritual heat, to im- 
part life to those things which are illustrated by light." " In 
proportion as the love is kindled, the truth shines." What 
can be plainer ? Will and understanding must not only be 



SWEDENBORG'S RELATION TO THE LORD. 67 

most intimately and practically connected, but must be most 
active in their relation to each other. The intellect cannot be 
divorced from the will and still have either life or light, for the 
■will is the very substance of the mind (" good constitutes the 
man himself," A. C. 10,153), and the understanding is not 
only impotent, but is nothing without it. Hence there is no 
perception or internal inspiration but through the will as the 
principal factor. 

7. His Inspiration. 

Illustration or inspiration must be " in proportion as the 
love is kindled;" for "the light of truth with a man is alto- 
gether according to the state of his love." " They must pro- 
ceed at a like pace." How, then, can we understand that the 
truths which Swedenborg saw, " did not correspond to his 
state of good;" and that "the state of his illustration did not 
depend upon his regeneration," and that, therefore, the truth 
by which he was illustrated and inspired, was " instilled into 
him hy the Lord" and, of course, instilled into him by some 
other process than that one only process which expresses God's 
relation to man — namely, influx? Influx, as the Writings con- 
clusively show, is the Lord's one only and unchangeable rela- 
tion to all being. And " the influx is always the same" as 
regards what comes from the Lord, but " is varied according 
to state and reception." In regard to man, " the influx of the 
Lord is into good and through good into truth, and not con- 
trariwise ; thus into the will and by the will into the under- 
standing, and not contrariwise." Because, and solely because, 
of his state of regeneration, Swedenborg received immediate 
influx into his will and mediate influx into his understanding ; 
and those influxes were conjoined, and he suffered himself to 
be led by the Lord. This is most plainly the reason, and the 
only reason, why Swedenborg, like all other men in a similar 
state of regeneration, was in " revelation from perception," or 
was " internally inspired." His spiritual vision or intromis- 
sion into the spiritual world, which was only a " certain separa- 



68 SWEDENBORG AND THE NEW AGE. 

tion from the body as to his intellectual part," had nothing to 
do with his inspiration, either for or against. Such vision or 
intromission was, relatively to his perception or inspiration, a 
very external matter. Even natural men sometimes have such 
vision, and thus such separation, though with a difference in 
extent and degree. Such intromission was, with Swedenborg, 
simply one of the important agencies in his qualifications for 
his peculiar mission, — one of the qualifiers, one of the indis- 
pensable conditions, in fact, of his state and reception ; one of 
the factors which enabled his inspiration, or the influx of 
Divine Truth into him, to take effect in the way it did. He 
might have done other work requiring illustration and internal 
inspiration or perception, but he could not, as effectually as he 
did, have done the work he had to do, without this factor ; 
any more than the eye, or any other organ of the body, can 
perform as perfectly its function, with any part of its organism 
gone, however small, and even though receiving the same un- 
impaired and unchangeable influx from the heart and the 
brain. 

8. Conditions of Internal Inspiration,. 

The cause and conditions of internal inspiration, as of reve- 
lation from perception, as stated throughout the Writings, are 
intelligible, rational, and practical, and, we may add, apply to 
all men ; they are simple and easily understood, — are, indeed, 
just what, to be in accord with other teachings, we should ex- 
pect them to be. We cannot reverse what Swedenborg so 
clearly teaches on this subject. A certain intellectual sepa- 
ration from the body cannot change the cause or the conditions 
of internal inspiration; for.it cannot change man's relation to 
the Lord, the one only Source of such inspiration, for that 
relation is an internal one, — the heavens are external compared 
with it. No angel can get between the Lord's immediate in- 
flux and man, and this is the chief element in internal inspi- 
ration. Immediate influx is into the will, is into the regener- 
ated love there; and perception, or internal inspiration, is the 



SWEDE NB ORG'S RELATION TO THE LORD. 69 

result. And sucli a state of mind enables man, if gifted with 
spiritual vision, — which, as before stated, is relatively an ex- 
ternal matter, — to be consciously " in consociation with angels 
as one of them." No unregenerated man, even though in 
spiritual vision, could possibly have had the kiud of intelligent 
and conscious association with the angels that Swedenborg 
enjoyed. And the reason is a perfectly obvious one. For the 
contrast between such a man and an angel is as great as be- 
tween a wild man of the woods and a philosopher. Such wild 
man may be in the presence of a philosopher, thus in exter- 
nally visible society with him ; but to be in intimate consociation 
with him is another and very different matter, — is, indeed, an 
impossibility. The fish might as well attempt to consociate 
with the bird, or the grub with the butterfly. This may help 
us to see the real nature of Swedenborg's intromission into the 
spiritual world, and how entirely different it was from that of 
any one that ever preceded him. Because he was in internal 
inspiration like the angels he could be in consociation with 
them as " their equal." 

What does Swedenborg mean, therefore, when he says that 
" Inspiration is an insertion into angelic societies," but that the 
inspiration was the cause rather than the effect of the inser- 
tion ? And what does he mean in the following citations, 
made by another to show that Swedenborg came into a state 
of inspiration mainly as a result of being placed in the society 
of angels? 1. "Then by the Lord's command three angels 
descended out of heaven and were associated with me, in order 
that, from an interior perception, I might speak with those 
who were in the idea of three gods ; . . . and then, from in- 
spiration conferred [illata~], I spoke with them." T. C. R. 135. 
2. " When I think of what I am to write, and while I am 
writing, I am gifted with a perfect inspiration ; formerly this 
would have been my own, but now I know for certain that 
what I write is the living truth of Glod." 3. " What was 
written above was inspired by an angel, who was with me, 



70 SWEDENBORG AND THE NEW AGE. 

which I could perceive from the light and other indications. 
The words flowed out spontaneously on the paper, but with- 
out dictation." Adv. 5394. 4. " While writing, to-day, I 
experienced an angel directing what I wrote, and, indeed, in 
such a manner that I thought thence that there is not the 
smallest particular but what takes place under the auspices 
and the direction of God Messiah." S. D. 446. Let this 
suffice. See also S. D. 2270. 

What is there in either of these quotations to show that 
Swcdenborg's inspiration was caused, in any way or manner, 
by his insertion among angels ? In No. 1 the angels came 
evidently in some way to be an aid by their presence, but not 
to be the cause of either his perception or of his inspiration. 
We can see no reason whatever for the second citation. It is, 
then, most plainly a false conclusion that " the Lord endowed 
Swedenborg with inspiration by inserting him into the society 
■ of angels." In one place Swedenborg expressly says that cer- 
tain tilings were " inspired by an angel." But what does this 
mean ? Will you so interpret it as to make it contradict the 
great fundamental principles of inspiration as so clearly and 
abundantly taught in the Writings? and as to make it contradict 
other statements, viz., that "Swedenborg was instructed, while 
writing the doctrines of the New Church, by no spirit or angel, 
but by the Lord alone" ? We do not believe that Swedenborg 
ever contradicts himself. But some make him do so by the 
use they make of various quotations they draw from the 
Writings. It is plain enough that anything inspired into one 
by an angel is a very different matter from Divine Truth in- 
spired into one by the " conjunction of mediate and immediate 
influx from the Lord." The heading and the close of S. D. 
446 show that Swedenborg speaks of his own experience, as 
he often does elsewhere, as illustrative of a general principle 
as applicable to angels and all regenerated men. That pas- 
sage certainly does not mean that Swedenborg received internal 
perception or inspiration as a result of his insertion among 



SWEDENBORG'S RELATION TO THE LORD. 71 

angels, or in an angelic society, any more than a man receives 
his native talent — what God has given him — as a physician or 
lawyer by his insertion among physicians or lawyers. 

9. Result of Regeneration. 

We see, therefore, and see plainly, that Swedenborg's in- 
spiration was, unmistakably, the result of his regeneration, 
and not the result, as some suppose and teach, of " a certain 
separation from the body as to his intellectual part," and then 
the " instillation" — in a certain extraordinary way — " of truth 
into him by the Lord Himself;" nor the result of his " inser- 
tion among angels." Just as if the Lord ever really acted in 
an extraordinary way in any other sense than that in which 
all that is extraordinary is due entirely to the condition, form, 
and action of the vessel recipient of the Divine influx and 
action ! Swedenborg makes nothing plainer than that all in- 
flux from the Divine is the same and its inherent action the 
same, but that all variety is owing entirely to the varied re- 
ciprocal action of the recipient vessel. This principle is as 
rigidly applicable to Swedenborg's case as to any other, and 
we wander into error just so sure as we fail in any case or in 
any sense to recognize it. 

But we are speaking now, let it be remembered, not of Swe- 
denborg's peculiar qualifications for his mission, or of what is 
peculiar in them, but of the cause and conditions of his in- 
spiration or perception ; and these we claim were the same in 
Swedenborg's case as in that of all other men, in all cases 
alike, the cause being, first, the Divine Influx, and, second, 
the conditions or the state of mind as to regeneration. (We 
will consider what was pecidiar in his case farther on.) Thus 
there is no real cause whatever for saying, as some do, that no 
man in this world can come into a state of perception like that 
of Swedenborg, " even if he should be regenerated to the 
same high degree," unless he be separated from his body as to 
his intellectual part as Swedenborg was. For such separation 



72 SWEDENBORG AND THE NEW AGE. 

is nowhere mentioned by Swedenborg as one of the conditions 
of perception or internal inspiration; it is only a factor, like 
all others, and relatively an external one, as before stated, in 
qualifications for a certain office or use ; just as, if I may use 
the illustration, the use of the telescope with its appliances is 
neither a cause nor a condition of natural vision, but is vir- 
tually an extension of it, and thus is a most important factor 
in the qualifications of an astronomer. And all can see how 
very important, how absolutely indispensable indeed, this fac- 
tor was in Swedenborg's case. In its importance to his mission 
Swedenborg's intromission, as to his " intellectual part," into 
the spiritual world was, comparatively, as the astronomer's 
intromission, so to speak, by astronomical instruments into the 
sidereal heavens. But even with this intromission or spiritual 
vision Swedenborg could have done nothing as regards his 
special mission — namely, an explanation of the internal sense 
of the Word — without internal inspiration or perception, any 
more than the astronomer, even with all the external aids of 
his science, could do anything without his natural vision ; or, 
rather, to make the illustration a better one, without a certain 
degree of developed intelligence in the use of the eye and 
such aids. 



CHAPTER III. 

SWEDENBORG'S RELATION TO THE LORD (Continued). 

1. " Varied a Little." 

Swedenborg says (Adv. III. G955, G966) : " With him 
who is inspired there is not the least thing in any expression, 
not even an iota, which is not inspired, although it is varied a 
little according to the gift and endowment of him who utters 
the inspiration." 

This is an instructive and significant passage in regard to 
Swedenborg's part or the finite part in the Writings, or in 
regard to how or in what sense they were his writings. But 
this is what Swedenborg says in regard to the prophets, or 
those who, from external inspiration, wrote the Sacred Scrip- 
tures. How does it apply to Swedenborg's case ? 

2. Swedenborg and the Prophets. 

Let us consider what the Prophets were inspired to do and 
what Swedenborg was inspired to do. We are all agreed that 
the Prophets were externally inspired, and to write the letter 
of the Word, to give the Word its lowest finite form, which is 
its " basis, continent, and firmament," which is, in other words, 
its " outer garment" or its " casket." We know that the letter 
is not in itself holy, but is holy in virtue of that of which it 
is the basis and continent. On the contrary, Swedenborg was 
internally inspired, and to write an explanation of the internal 
sense of the letter. His writings, strange to say, are claimed 
by some to be the internal or spiritual sense of the Word, not 
an explanation of it merely, as Swedenborg most plainly 

73 



74 SWEDENBORG AND THE NEW AGE. 

teaches. Now the <: internal sense is the soul of the Word," 
is the " very essential Word," the Word as " Spirit and Life," 
as the " Spirit of Truth," thus is " the Lord Himself." Now 
was Swedenborg inspired to write the Spirit of Truth, thus to 
write the Lord Himself? 

No ; that won't do. No one can believe that. Swedenborg 
only wrote an explanation of the Spiritual sense. We see 
what an immense difference there is, therefore, between what 
he wrote and what the Prophets wrote ; it is as the difference 
between a mere description or explanation of the soul, on the 
one side, and the body itself, which is an organic outcome 
from the soul, on the other side. There is, as it were, an or- 
ganic connection between the Spiritual sense as the Spirit of 
truth and the letter, as between the soul and the body ; but 
none whatever between the Spiritual sense as an explanation 
and the letter. 

Now, as is the difference between the Word itself and its 
letter or " continent," or between the soul and its body, or 
between the jewels and the casket containing them, such is 
the difference in any variation made by the writers of the 
different senses, the natural and the spiritual. And in this 
connection how pertinent are the Lord's words : " They parted 
my garments among them, and upon my vesture did they cast 
lots," — garments denoting the external and vesture the inter- 
nal sense of the Word. The vesture must be preserved en- 
tire. The internal sense, " the very essential Word itself," 
thus " the Lord Himself," cannot be divided, cannot be 
marred, or tarnished, or " varied," by the touch of any finite 
agent or medium. A little variation in the casket, the mere 
receptacle of the jewels, is a very different matter from a 
little variation in the jewels themselves. " When an angel 
inspires words into a prophet ... he is only in spiritual 
things, and thus acts upon the mind of him who is inspired, 
thus excites that by which they [the spiritual things] fall into 
expressions in the usual way. The expressions are such as 



SWEDENBORQ'S RELATION TO THE LORD. 75 

belong to the prophet, thus such as occur to him according to 
his comprehension and form of mind. This is the reason why 
the style of the prophets is so varied, each one having a style 
according to the peculiar, previously-developed, analytical form 
of his own mind." Adv. 6965. Thus it is plain that the 
form of the literal expression was not important further than 
to have it a truly corresponding ultimate " basis," " continent," 
and " firmament" of the Divine spiritual principle. This 
form might be " varied a little," and without detriment, so 
long as the correspondence was preserved. It was of no im- 
portance, indeed, that the letter came from " filthy vessels," — 
there were no other for it to come from, — it was what was in 
the letter, and what the letter was by correspondence, that 
sanctified it. The letter, in its mere natural meaning, must 
be accommodated to those to whom it was given ; it was the 
correspondence that effected the conjunction between Grod and 
man, between the innermost and the outermost of being. The 
inspiration was really in the angel, and an internal one, and 
not in the prophet. It was only the material that was in the 
prophet, such as it was, that was used by the angel, the prophet 
himself being, in a certain sense, only as a passive instrument 
and medium. The case was very different with Swedenborg. 
The influx of Divine Truth into him was the same as that into 
the angel, and the inspiration the same in kind, though not 
in degree ; for he, like the angel, was in " truth from good." 
But the influx did not take such entire possession of him as 
it did of the angel, for " even regenerated men," " when they 
pass into the other life, go from an obscure life into a clearer 
one, as from a kind of night into day," etc. A. C. 2367. 
The influx into the angel who inspired words into the prophet 
took entire possession of him [the angel], so that he was not 
conscious of being other than the Lord, — that is, other than 
the Divine Truth which so completely filled him ; and so filled 
him, not because the Lord did more for him than for other 
angels or for men, but because his peculiar form of mind and 



76 SWEDENBORG AND THE NEW AGE. 

developed and regenerated state could and did spontaneously so 
receive. The angel, having that office to perform and being 
thus filled, may have been in an immeasurably intenser degree 
of light than Swedenborg was in. Compared^ with the angel, 
" the light itself in which man is, respectively, is full of dark- 
ness." (Ibid.) And this is said of the regenerated man. 
And yet, considering his other qualifications, and his peculiar 
genius or form of mind, Swedenborg may have been immeas- 
urably better prepared and qualified for the duties of his pe- 
culiar office than any angel was or could. have been. 

Let us look into this difference a little more deeply. No 
two angels are in precisely the same degree of light ; but not 
because the Lord does more or less, or gives in different de- 
grees ; not because there is a different influx of Divine Truth 
into one from what there is into another, but wholFy because 
of different states of reception, — that is, because of different 
forms of mind, different experiences, different degrees of prog- 
ress in heavenly life, different intellectual qualifications, and 
thus different uses to perform ; just as it is with all the infi- 
nitely varied members and organisms of the body in their rela- 
tion to influx from the heart and the brain, no two of which 
receive and appropriate exactly alike. 

3. Exceptional. 

It may be thought by some that the Lord did something extra 
— something in addition to influx from and of Himself — for 
those angels who " inspired words into the prophets ;" just as 
it is thought by some that the Lord did something extraor- 
dinary for Swedenborg to prepare him for his mission, some- 
thing besides flowing into him. But cannot every one see, 
who is imbued with the true philosophy of the Heavenly Doc- 
trines, that this implies that there are two Gods, namely, one 
in the influx of Divine Truth, God within you, — and an- 
other outside, devising and planning and considering expedi- 
ents to meet emergencies ? We know of no such God as the 



SWEDENBORG' S RELATION TO THE LORD. 77 

latter, — of none who is not already and always, and with all 
His attributes, in the Influx of Himself as Divine Truth, who 
is not already and always in that influx with all that He is, 
and thus with all that He has to give. This idea, which is so 
prevalent, of two Gods, — namely, one outside as a sort of su- 
perintendent, and relatively at a distance doing the devising 
and planning, and the other inside, sent by the former as an in- 
flux to do the execution, — is perfectly bewildering and entirely 
destroys the idea of one God. Hence, the very common mis- 
understanding of Swedenborg, when he speaks of the " Lord's 
appearing to him," of the "Lord's instructing him," "leading 
him," " preparing him for his mission," and the like. It was 
no God outside of him that did these things, but God within 
him, God in the influx of Divine Truth that flowed into him ; 
it was no God outside, instigating, instilling, and infusing some- 
thing, in his case, in a certain exceptional way. What was 
exceptional in regard to Swedenborg ? 

There never is anything exceptional in the Divine or the 
Divine agency. All that was exceptional in Swedenborg's case 
was in his recipiency, first, in the germinal or potential genius 
or form of his mind, thus in his capabilities ; then in his de- 
veloping tastes, capacities, dispositions, and the like. He was 
prepared for his work by the Lord, — that is, by influx from the 
Lord, thus by God in him, — but by means and processes which 
were entirely dependent for their peculiar mode of operation 
upon what was within and constituted his peculiar form of being. 
Just as an acorn develops into an oak not because of any dif- 
ference in the influx from what flows into all seeds, but be- 
cause of the difference of operation of such influx caused by 
the acorn's own peculiar nature as a recipient of such influx ; 
so of all men, — so of all angels. Thus Swedenborg was 
prepared for his work on identically the same principle that 
the oak is prepared to bear acorns, — namely, because that was 
the natural, orderly, and necessary result of the Divine Influx 
into his peculiar form of mind. If he followed the leadings 



78 SWEDENBORO AND THE NEW AGE. 

or promptings or impulses of such Influx, — God within him, 
— as he did, he could not help being thus prepared, any more 
than the acorn, under the required conditions, can help devel- 
oping into a fruit-bearing tree. So that what was special, ex- 
ertional, or extraordinary in Swedenborg, did not depend at 
all upon anything special, exceptional, or extraordinary in what 
the Lord did for him, but upon what was in him, thus upon 
the way in which he received what the Lord does, and equally, 
for all men. So of all other extraordinary men, so of each 
and all extraordinary angels, — of those who inspired the Word 
into the prophets, and of those who were sent on any extraor- 
dinary mission. All that was special or extraordinary was not 
in what the Lord did, but in the operation of what was re- 
ceived; and the operation of what was received depended upon 
the state and character of the recipient vessel. 

This is a great principle which is never violated by the Lord 
in His relation to the universe, whether natural or spiritual ; 
it is a principle which cannot be violated by Him. All that is 
is an outcome from Him, and solely by the operation of influx j 
just as is the case with all organic being in its relation to life, 
which is the result of the operation of such life by influx. 
This is the way the plant is evolved and also the animal body. 
It is the great law of creation or of imitation. And dues 
finite life — which, in the law of its operation, is an exemplifi- 
cation of the Infinite Life — ever vary in its operations in any 
manner or degree, except so far as its action is modified by re- 
cipient conditions? does finite life ever so vary that the results 
of its operations do not partake of its own peculiar individu- 
ality? Can the influx into the acorn, as thus modified, evolve 
anything but what is wholly and distinctively oak ? Can the 
influx into the egg evolve anything but what is, in kind, dis- 
tinctively of the parent bird ? Can influx into the oak, as thus 
affected by its recipient vessel, evolve any other than what is dis- 
tinctively the fruit of the oak ? How can man or angel, then, 
be the instrument, by Divine influx, of anything that partakes 



SWEDENBORG'S RELATION TO THE LORD. 79 

not of his own individuality, that has not his own image stamped 
upon it, — that is not, in other words, " varied a little" ? This 
is the point. 

4. Individuality Sacredly Intact. 

But does this mar, in the least possible degree, the holiness 
of the Sacred Scriptures ? Does it abate one iota from Sweden- 
borg's writings as authority? Certainly not. How is this? 
How can the Sacred Scriptures, having come through the 
qualifying [the " varying a little"] individuality of a finite 
medium, be purely Divine ? And the angel and the prophet were 
such mediums, and mediums never, for a moment, in what they 
did, divested of their individuality. Even the angel was him- 
self, was himself even when so filled with the Divine Influx — 
with Divine Truth, with God — that he was unconscious for the 
time that he was other than such influx, than God. He still 
possessed his individuality intact, unmarred ; and his freedom 
and rationality were a part of his individuality, and these 
were never more perfect ; thus he was never more perfectly 
angel or man than when so completely filled with the influx of 
God, thus than when so completely a " servant'' 1 of God. Such 
freedom and rationality are, indeed, and at all times and in all 
conditions, indispensable attributes of angelhood as well as of 
manhood. They are most essential parts of angel as well as 
of man, and in action. Thus what passed through the angel to 
inspire the prophet must inevitably have partaken somewhat 
of the angel's individuality. It could not have been finited — 
could not have done its work and answered the Divine end — if 
this had not been the case. The angel was not, in him- 
self, a Divine medium, thus Divinely pure ; he never could 
become so, though perpetually born and reborn to eternity. 
The angel that was such medium to the prophet may have 
been in the heavens thousands or hundreds of thousands 
of years, and in a correspondingly developed, ineffable state 
of light above that of the regenerated man ; and he may 
have been, if such a thing is conceivable, even more obedient 



80 SWEDENBORQ AND THE NEW AGE. 

to the Divine influx than the organism of the plant is to its 
influx of life ; yet his freedom and rationality were most essen- 
tial parts in his character as such medium, and those, too, of 
his own peculiar individuality. And the individuality of every 
angel is different from that of every other angel. It required 
a peculiar one to perform such a function from the Divine, but 
peculiar only in the same sense that it requires a peculiar in- 
dividuality to perform any other use in the Divine economy ; 
only in the sense in which one peculiar individuality, so to 
speak, or mechanism or organism of vegetable fibre, is required 
as a medium to one kind of fruit, and another to another kind. 
But all that has been peculiar in the office or function of any 
man or angel has been owing to the development of what was 
peculiar in the potential germ of his being, and not at all to 
anything afterwards grafted on," "infused," or " instilled" by 
the Lord as a Divine expedient. 

We mean to say that the angels, in all they do, act as of them- 
selves, and that the work they do is in all cases their work, and 
to the extent that their individuality is in it ; and their indi- 
viduality is always in it, just as really so as the individuality 
or quality of the apple-tree is in the apple, and each of its 
kind. But to be led by the Lord, let it be always remembered, 
is one and the first of the essential elements of angelic, as it is 
of true human, life. No act devoid of such element is, in the 
true sense of the word, either an angelic or a human act. But 
man's being led by the Lord is a very different thing from a 
beast's being led by a man, a soldier by a general, or a child 
even by a parent. The Lord leads angels and regenerated 
men " in freedom according to reason." This is the reason 
why their individuality is in all cases in their work. It is 
their rationality and freedom that enable them to be, in the 
highest sense and with the most perfect efficiency, the Lord's 
agents. The " tables" that were formed by the Lord were 
broken because there was nothing finite or human in them to 
accommodate them to the finite or human state of mind. 



SWEDENBORG'S RELATION TO THE LORD. 81 

5. Why the Word is Holy in the Letter. 

Thus we see why the letter of the Word must be " varied a 
little," why it must partake of the peculiar individuality of the 
agents — and angelic as well as human agents — through whom it 
came. It would have been worthless for its Divine end with- 
out such " variation." But this fact, let me repeat, docs not 
mar in the least the holiness of the letter. For the word- 
inspiring angel was in such relation to the inflowing Divine, 
was in such perfect obedience, thus in such oneness with the 
Divine, that the Divine Truth, through the individual, uniting 
agency of the angel, ultimated itself in language op cor- 
respondence. This is plainly all that was essential to its 
holiness, all that was necessary to make the words of the 
prophets virtually the Lord's words ; they were words op 
correspondence. They were words, therefore, that the Di- 
vine Truth could flow into and rest in as its ultimate con- 
tinent and basis. The words of the Bible were not, and they 
could not have been, the Lord's words in any other sense than 
that of their correspondence. There is nothing distinctively 
and Divinely His, from the highest clear down to the very 
lowest, but what is so in virtue of its correspondence. Nothing- 
is His that does not correspond. This is a great principle 
which is exemplified in all things in nature even, and made 
plain in the Writings. The letter of the Word is as the bark 
Of the tree or the skin of an animal. Does not the bark 
correspond to the organic life of the tree? Does it corre- 
spond to the life of any other tree even of the same kind ? 
And is not the same true of the skin in its relation to the life 
of the body? Swedenborg speaks of the letter of the Word 
as its skin ; and, because the letter is denoted by the skin, 
the skin of Moses' face, when he came down from the Mount, 
was said to shine. 

5 



82 SWEDENBORG AND THE NEW AGE. 

6. Instructed by Angels. 

Swedenborg was not instructed in the Doctrines of the New 
Church by any angel, but by the Lord alone while reading the 
Word. T. C. B. 779. This is brimful of significance. The 
angels could not, of course, instruct him about the letter of 
the Word. They were only in the internal sense, the natural 
meaning not being in the heavens or cognizable to the angels. 
How could they then " explain" the Sacred Scriptures? How 
could they instruct him in or about the different styles of the 
Scriptures ? How could they give him the kind of informa- 
tion the thirsting, rational man needs about the science of 
correspondences? How could they teach him the signification 
of Biblical words and phrases and sentences ? Such revela- 
tions, such openings or unveilings of Scripture, must come, if 
at all, through the instrumentality of a man on earth. An 
angel could not have inspired words, as he did into the proph- 
ets, or thoughts even, or ideas or principles, in explanations of 
natural words or ideas which he [the angel] knew nothing 
about. Besides, an angel is one who has come into the order 
of the Lord's Providence, into its current or " stream." He 
is, therefore, so far, in correspondence; he so far thinks, 
speaks, and acts from correspondence. If, therefore, he were 
filled by the Lord, — that is, by the influx of Divine Truth, as 
such angel would be, — and should inspire words, or ideas to be 
clothed with words, in Swedenborg's mind, such words would 
be words of correspondence, and Swedenborg's writings would, 
therefore, be holy writings or Sacred Scriptures ; they would 
be the Lord's writings, indeed, and thus didactic instead of 
explanatory in their character. Thus we see why Swedenborg 
was not instructed by angels. It was not Sacred Scriptures, but 
an explanation of Sacred Scriptures, that was needed ; and the 
angels could not give this. 



SWEDENBORG'S RELATION TO THE LORD. 83 

l 7. Writings not Correspondences. 

Yes, the fact that Swedenborg's writings are not in the lan- 
guage of correspondences, is an insurmountable objection to 
their being regarded as the Lord's writings. It is admitted 
that they are not in such language ; but it is said that " the 
language of correspondence is not necessarily inspired;" that 
the book of Job and other ancient books were written in " cor- 
respondences, and yet were not Divinely inspired." Swcden- 
borg says, in " Arcana Coelcstia" (No. 175G), that " the most 
ancient style of writing was representative ;" that even " profane 
writers in those times composed their histories thus, and even 
the things of civil and moral life were thus treated ; so that 
nothing that was written was altogether such as it appeared in 
the letter. . . . All books of the church in those times were 
therefore written in this style." It is, indeed, a question 
whether, considering the nature of the people and of their 
language in those times, they could have written in any other 
style. 

But the language of " representatives" and " significatives" 
is not necessarily the language of correspondences. All cor- 
respondences are representatives, but the converse is not true. 
" Representatives are nothing but images of spiritual things 
in natural, and when the latter are rightly represented iu the 
former they then correspond." A. C. 4044. " The things 
which flow in from the spiritual world, and are presented in 
the natural, are in general representations ; and so far as they 
AGREE together they are correspondences." 2989, 2990. " Rep- 
resentatives are the external things which are put forth as 
effigies of internal things, and those which concord, or which 
are rightly represented, are correspondences," as expressed by 
Rich. This is all very plain. Correspondence is the relation 
existing between cause and effect, and between spiritual things 
and natural, when they agree ; without agreement there is not 
correspondence, but only representation. The difference between 



84 SWEDEXBORG AND THE NEW AGE. 

correspondence and representation is clearly and abundantly 
shown by Swedenborg. The Sacred Scriptures were written 
in the language of correspondences as well as of representa- 
tives ; and this is so because there is agreement. Other ancient 
books were written only in the language of representatives. 

But wbat if it were admitted that such books were written 
in the language of correspondences, would this be any evidence 
that the Lord could or would write in any other language ? 
The argument would amount to nothing, even with this admis- 
sion. Wbat ! human, even " profane," writings in the language 
of correspondences, and the Lord's writings not? Whereas 
human writings cannot be in that language, and the Lord's 
writings cannot be in any other, " the style of the Word 
[thus of the Lord, who is the Word in its ' spirit and life'] 
is the very Divine style, ... is such that there is holiness in 
every sentence, in every word, yea, in some instances, in the 
very letters." T. C. R. 191. " The Word is written by mere 
correspondences, wherefore the Lord, because He spoke from 
tin: Divine, spake from correspondences" And why? "Be- 
cause," it is added, " what is from the Divine, this, in nature, 
falls into such things as correspond to Divine things." T. C. R. 
201. The Lord spoke from correspondences because He spoke 
from the Divine. How full of significance ! nothing less than 
that the language of correspondences is the language, and the 
only language, of the Lord. Nothing, nothing whatever, comes 
from Him but in correspondence ; this is the one only law of 
its efflux and influx. All. effects of the operation, then, of 
such efflux and influx must be — so far as He is in them, and 
they are, therefore, His — correspondences. It cannot be 
otherwise. 

What is the inevitable conclusion, then, in regard to Swe- 
denborg's writings, IF they are the Lord's writings, but that 
their language is the language of correspondences ? This is 
just as surely the case, as that effects follow causes, and that 
they are related to each other by correspondence. And those 



SWEDENBORG'S RELATION TO THE LORD. 85 

Writings are effects of which, if the Lord is distinctively and 
peculiarly the author, He is the cause. And the corre- 
spondence could not possibly have been destroyed but by the 
operation of such cause through a self-conscious, rationally 
responsible, modifying medium, such as Swedenborg was. 
Wherever correspondence fails, it is because there the Divine 
fails as the unqualified or unmodified cause. Hence those 
Writings either have an internal sense and need themselves to 
be explained, or they are not the Lord's writings. 

8. Instructed by the Lord. 

But how was Swedenborg instructed by the Lord ? This 
question has been substantially answered in what was said on 
the subject of illustration, revelation from perception, and in- 
spiration. Swedenborg, like all other regenerated men, was in- 
structed by the Lord as the Word, thus by the Lord as an influx 
of Divine Truth. Why is there instruction in such influx ? be- 
cause, in Swedenborg's own language, it " is illumination which 
gives the faculty of apperceiving and understanding truth. This 
illumination is from the light of heaven, which is from the Lord. 
This light is nothing else than Divine Truth." A. C. 5668. 
Such influx or such instruction takes place while man is read- 
ing the Word. " Heaven, which is in the internal sense of the 
Word, flows in with the man whose internal man is open when 
he reads the Word, enlightens him, gives him perception, and 
"thus teaches him. Yea, . . . [such a] man's internal man is 
in the internal sense of its own accord, . . . although he is 
not aware of it." A. C. 10,400. " The Lord teaches every one 
by the Word," thus by influx. Therefore Swedenborg was no 
exception in this respect. But the illuminating effects of such 
influx from the Lord, as shown elsewhere, are according to the 
subject's peculiar character, condition, and form of mind. All 
men are different in these respects. " The Lord [also] teaches 
man according to the knowledges that are with him, and does 
not immediately infuse new knowledges into him''' (T. C. R. 



86 SWEDENBORG AND THE NEW AGE. 

208) ; or, as expressed in A. C. 10,400, " man's illustration, 
when he reads the Word, is according to the light in which he 
may be by the knowledges that are with him." It is in this 
way that " the man who is led by the Lord is taught by Him 
from day to day what he is to do and to speak, and also what 
he is to preach and write ; for when evils are removed, then 
he is continually under the Lord's auspices, and enjoys illus- 
tration. " But" — and this is directly to the point — " he is led 
and taught by the Lord, not immediately or by any perceptible 
inspiration, but by influx into his spiritual delight, whence he 
has perception according to the truths of ichich his understand- 
ing is composed." A. E. 825. Again, such persons " have a 
certain interior perception in regard to those things which are 
to be done, especially during the act." S. D. 892. Sweden- 
borg testifies abundantly to the fact that he was taught by the 
Lord precisely as other regenerated men are, — namely, by in- 
flux and illustration. " The Lord alone taught me, who re- 
vealed Himself to me, and afterwards appeared, and still 
appears, before my eyes like the sun, ... as He appears to 
the angels, and illustrated me." D. P. 135. " There was a 
dictation in the thought . . . which was thereby led to an un- 
derstanding," etc. Swedenborg " was gifted with a perfect 
inspiration." But " inspiration is not dictation, but is influx 
from the Divine." A. C. 9094. 

How plainly all this shows how the Lord teaches the re- 
generated man, and how therefore He taught Swedenborg, 
— namely, by influx, — as the one only way so far as the Lord is 
concerned ! All instruction by the Lord is in the operation and 
result of influx, which influx is the same with all men ; it is a 
sort of " dictation in the thought," and thence " understand- 
ing." The influx of Divine Truth stimulates thought, and 
that in the light of such truth is followed by understanding. 
But the nature of the understanding, of the illustration or 
revelation, — that is, of the instruction by the Lord, or of the 
Lord's " dictation," as it is sometimes called, — depends upon 



SWEDENBORG' S RELATION TO THE LORD. 87 

the peculiar genius, development, learning, etc., of the recipient. 
It is what is peculiar, or special, or exceptional, or extraor- 
dinary in the recipient himself, and this alone, that is the 
cause, and the sole cause, of all that is peculiar, special, excep- 
tional, or extraordinary in the Lord's relation to him. It was, 
first, Swedenborg's native genius— it was what was first in him 
in potency, and not what was afterwards put into him ; it was 
therefore what he could be developed into, and was, in fact, 
developed into, and not what the Lord did for him more or 
different from what He does for all men — that was the cause 
of all that was special or extraordinary in him in his relation 
to the Lord, or in his relation to his use or mission. It was 
this that caused that the same influx into him which flows 
into other men, thus the same instruction from the Lord which 
is given to other men, resulted in such extraordinary and widely 
different manifestations in his case; just as it is the potential 
form of the eye as differing from that of the ear, and not any 
difference in the influx from the heart and brain into it, that 
is the cause of all that is peculiar and special in the develop- 
ment and use of the eye. The nature and results of mediate 
as well as of immediate influx into the mind are characterized 
solely by the recipient mind itself. The Lord taught Sweden- 
borg precisely as He teaches all men, — that is, by influx of 
Himself as Divine Truth, as Living Light. And Swedenborg 
was affected by and acted from such influx precisely as is the 
case with other men in a like state of regeneration, only wich 
a difference determined, as with other men, by what belonged 
to and was peculiar to his own mind. 

9. The Lord's Writings. 

What does Swedenborg mean, then, by such language as the 
following, which is sometimes quoted to prove that " Sweden- 
borg's writings are the Lord's writings?" Namely, "What 
came from the Lord I wrote down, and what came from the 
angels I did not write down." A. C. 1183. " I was instructed 



88 SWEDENBORG AND THE NEW AGE. 

by no spirit and by no angel, but by the Lord alone." " The 
things which I have learned from representations, visions, and 
from conversations with spirits and angels, are from the Lord 
alone." S. D. 1647. "A revelation of truths from His 
mouth or from His Word." " Dictated to me out of heaven." 
" Written by the Lord through me." " Whether I was willing 
or not, I had to think and speak" [in a certain manner]. " Do 
not believe that I took anything from myself or from any 
angel, but from the Lord alone." 

These and like passages seem to indicate that, different from 
other men, Swedenborg was compelled by the Lord to write as 
he did ; and yet (as is admitted), in some mysterious and un- 
accountable way, in the full exercise of his understanding and 
in jiossession of his freedom, though the latter only as regards 
his " external thought." But how, if Swedenborg's writings 
can properly be called " the Lord's writings," could Sweden- 
borg possibly be other than practically a perfectly controlled, 
passive instrument, like a " quill," as expressed by one ? For, 
so far as they were written by Swedenborg in the exer- 
cise of his own understanding and freedom, though in the 
smallest degree, he was responsible for them as his own writ- 
ings. He " lifted up his tool upon them," and made them his 
instead of the Lord's, — that is, there was somewhat of his 
peculium, of his individuality, in them; so that they were just 
as much his as any act of a regenerated man is such regen- 
erated man's act. 



CHAPTER IV. 

MAN'S RELATION TO THE LORD. 

1. The Regenerated Man. 

And here is an important point, — namely, the difference be- 
tween a regenerated man's acts and the acts of an unregen- 
erated man. There is more of the Lord and less of the devil — 
i.e., less of man's selfish proprium — in the former than in the 
latter. The regenerated man is in the image and likeness of 
the Lord, he is in accord with the Lord's life, he is in spon- 
taneous and loving obedience to the impulses of the Divine 
Influx. He is lovingly led by the Lord, by the Lord as such 
Influx. What seems compulsion from a misinterpretation of 
some of Swedenborg's statements is really most essential free- 
dom. There is really more of the man's peculium, or the 
peculium of his distinctive individuality, in what he does in 
his regenerated than in what he does in his unregenerated 
state. It must be so, for there is more of the real man in 
him. The more fully and obediently he is the Lord's, the 
more perfectly he is himself, for the more completely he is 
" created ;" and this means the more strongly is every peculiar 
potential faculty in him brought out into its actuality. The 
Lord does not regenerate and develop man in the higher de- 
grees of his nature in order to bind him, or make a passive 
tool of him, or to limit or circumscribe, in any sense, the 
peculium of his individuality. What Swedenborg says of 
himself in the above passages is simply illustrative of general 
principles as applied to regenerated men. And what he says, in 
such connection, helps us to understand what will be our own 
5* 89 



90 SWEDENBORG AND THE NEW AGE. 

condition should we ever arrive at such high states of regen- 
eration. Whatever shall be our use, we shall be " led by the 
Lord;" and we shall so love to be led by Him that it will 
seem impossible to be otherwise led. We shall be in a state 
of freedom like that which the Lord is in. He loves to do 
the works of love, and He cannot do otherwise than do such 
works, for He has no love and tbus no power to do otherwise, 
and freedom is to do as one loves to do. The whole sphere 
and influence of heaven are the sphere and influence of love. 
There is a universal flowing in the direction of the freedom 
of love. The stronger one is in love, then, the stronger he is 
in freedom, and at the same time that he is more the Lord's he is 
more himself. The following from Swedenborg is in point, but 
it has, we think, been misinterpreted : " The universal heaven 
and earth, both in general and in particular, are governed by 
a sphere proceeding from the Lord. . . . Whenever I speak 
in this sphere, or when I think in it, as I now do while I am 
writing, each and every thing is in conformity with the action 
of this sphere; and nothing can be said, thought, or written, 
not even the least iota, but what is in conformity with this 
sphere." 

To live and think and act in " this sphere" is, of course, to 
do so from love, thus from the Lord alone, and not from self- 
love or evil spirits. It is the very nature of the angel and of 
the regenerated man, of him who has come into harmony with 
the sphere of the Divine Nature, to think and act from love, 
thus from the Lord. Swedenborg's case is not an exceptional 
one in this respect. What he did and what all do in that state 
of unity and oneness with the Lord are the Lord's doings, 
and this means that they are the doings of love. The regen- 
erated man and angel cannot help acting from love, thus from 
the Lord, unless, for some cause, they are let down tempora- 
rily from this high state. They are in a sense compelled so to 
act, and are so just in proportion to the completeness of their 
marriage union with the Lord. And yet this is most essential 



MAN'S RELATION TO THE LORD. 91 

freedom. And man and angel are most completely themselves 
just in proportion as they are in the Lord and He in them, and 
they are led by Him and act from Him. And their acts are 
most distinctly and peculiarly their own the more distinctly 
and completely they are the Lord's. All this is abundantly 
confirmed by what Swcdenborg says about others, and by what 
he says about himself or about his own experience as illustra- 
tive of general principles. 

2. Hoio the Lord governs Men. 

It is said by another that " when man's regeneration is 
accomplished, then he no longer governs himself, but is gov- 
erned by the Lord." This, of course, is true of all men. 
And how is he governed by the Lord ? Does the Lord govern 
him in an arbitrary way, telling him in words or in any other 
finite form to do this or to do that, as a master does a servant? 
When a master so commands a servant, the deed is not the 
servant's, but the master's. If the Lord governs regenerated 
men and angels in this way, all their deeds would be, responsi- 
bly, not their deeds, but His deeds. On the contrary, it is 
wisely added to the above, " And then the Lord governs him 
not only by immediate influx into his will, but also by mediate 
influx into his understanding." Why by both ? Because, it 
is further added, " Then also will and understanding, good 
and truth, mediate and immediate influx in him are conjoined." 
Because then the man is a perfect man, thus is completely 
himself, the two influxes hold him in perfect balance ; they so 
act in relation to each other as to leave man in freedom and 
make him responsible for his deeds. Otherwise man's deeds 
would be either wholly and thus responsibly the Lord's deeds, 
or wholly and thus responsibly the deeds of the mediums of 
the influx to him. They certainly could not be responsibly 
man's deeds. Thus, to be governed by the Lord, by both 
mediate and immediate influx, is to be in most essential free- 
dom. This is the state into which the Lord is constantly 



92 SWEDENBORG AND THE NEW AGE. 

striving to bring all men. And He never, in any case whatever, 
in any manner whatever, or in any sense or degree whatever, so 
far as He is concerned, — that is to say, so far as the inherent 
action of influx from Him is concerned, — does anything whatever 
to interfere with or mar in the least possible degree the perfec- 
tion of this state of freedom, though there may be appearances 
to the contrary, and there are, we confess, many such appear- 
ances, and both in the language of Sacred Scripture and also 
of Swedenborg's writings. But they are only appearances. 
The Lord has not, and He never had, any ends to accomplish 
through any imperfection, or through suspension of any of 
the normal prerogatives, either temporary or continued, of any 
of His creatures. And a man not in responsible freedom, or 
in a state in which his deeds are not responsibly his own, is 
not a man. There is nothing in influx — and this is the Lord's 
only practical relation to man — to interfere with man's free- 
dom, but everything to establish freedom ; so that the stronger 
the influx from the Lord, so far as man has come into the 
order of life, the more perfect is his freedom, for the more 
perfect is his manhood. No angel was ever more perfectly or 
more responsibly himself than those who were the Lord's ser- 
vants, in connection with the prophets, in writing the Sacred 
Scriptures, and no unregenerate men were ever in greater 
freedom than were the prophets in the performance of their 
part of the service. And, for the same reason, never was 
man more perfectly and more responsibly himself than was 
Swedenborg while writing the doctrines of the New Church. 
And hence never were any man's deeds more responsibly his 
own deeds than were Swedenborg's in every one of the duties 
of his mission. It was the" correspondence, as shown else- 
where, that made the writings of the prophets the Lord's 
writings, or Sacred Scriptures ; they were the Lord's hy (heir 
correspondence. Swedenborg's writings, as universally ad- 
mitted, are without such correspondence. They are princi- 
ples or teachings or doctrines as conceived and formulated and 






MAN'S RELATION TO THE LORD. 93 

expressed in words by a mind in the very light of heaven, by 
a man who, at the same time that he was on earth among men, 
and thus in natural language, was also gifted with revelation 
from perception ; by a man, therefore, who could explain to 
men such high and heavenly principles, teachings, or doctrines. 
Yes, Swedenborg was " led," " taught," " governed," by the 
Lord, and " by the Lord alone," but in no arbitrary way, by 
no arbitrary process of " insinuation," " dictation," or " instil- 
lation," as some suppose, and as some of Swedenborg's state- 
ments lead a mind blind to the spirit and philosophy of his 
writing to suppose ; but he was led, taught, etc., by influx, 
thus by precisely that process by which the Lord leads, 
teaches, and governs all men and angels, and this means that 
he was led and taught and governed " in freedom according to 
reason," and thus as a full and perfect man. 

3. Certain Passages : What they Show. 

Many of the passages quoted from the Writings to prove 
that Swedenborg was only as an irresponsible scribe or a mere 
amanuensis of the Lord show, on the contrary, how much 
there is to learn about a man in his regenerated or angelic 
state in his relation to the Lord. The mode of operation of 
influx from the Lord in leading, teaching, and governing all 
regenerated men and angels, as taught and exemplified in 
Swedenborg's own individual case, is exceedingly instructive 
and interesting. Swedenborg's case, or what he says about 
himself, is a grand exemplification of a regenerated, or of a 
highly-advanced regenerating, man's relation to the Lord ; for 
— we insist upon it — there is, and there can be, no exceptional 
cases in what the Lord does for man, any more than there is 
in what the sun does for flowers and trees. No one imbued 
with the real spirit and philosophy of the Writings can for a 
moment regard what Swedenborg says about himself as at all 
exceptional in what the Lord did for him, or exceptional in 
any other sense than as depending entirely upon his own recipi- 



94 SWEDENBORG AND THE NEW AGE. 

ency. And the passages so often quoted from the Writings 
to show that they are the Lord's writings, thus " Holy Writ- 
ings," Sacred Scriptures, or " the Word without the external 
sense," no more show that they are the Lord's writings than 
they show that all the works of both regenerated men and 
angels are responsibly the Lord's works. That Swedenborg 
was — different from other men and angels — consciously in both 
worlds at the same time does not in the least degree affect the 
question of his freedom and thus of his own exclusive rational 
responsibility for what he wrote ; it only enabled him to do, 
as the Lord's servant, what he could not otherwise have done ; 
it only afforded different conditions of mind as modifiers of 
the operations of the same influx from the Lord that flows 
into all minds. Swedenborg's intromission into the other life 
— the real significance of which we think is often misunder- 
stood — was, like his peculiar form of mind, his genius, his 
tastes, his remarkable learning, — in a word, like every other 
trait or disposition of his individual character, — only one of the 
many modifying conditions through which the Divine Influx 
operated, first to prepare him for, and then to enable him 
efficiently to perform, the important works of his mission. 

4. Strange Conclusions. 

Strange to say, it is claimed by some that even the " Spiritual 
Diary" is the Lord's writing, thus " equally the Word with 
Swedenborg"s other writings," though, like the rest, the " Word 
without the literal sense." The following is quoted in proof: 

" In general, it is to be borne in mind that everything 
written in this book [i.e., in S. D.] has not been written by me 
otherwise than from living experience, from conversations with 
spirits and angels, from thought like tacit speech communicated 
to me while writing, from things insinuated by those who were 
present during such experiences, and under whose direction I 
was while thinking and writing, even as to my hand ; so that 
all things contained in these three books, and likewise in other 



MAN'S RELATION TO THE LORD. 95 

places, although they frequently do not cohere, are neverthe- 
less experiences of facts derived in their own peculiar way 
from spirits and angels." S. D. 2894. 

Again : " What I have learned from representatives, visions, 
and from conversations with spirits and angels, is from the 
Lord alone." S. D. 1647. 

Again, Swedenborg says, respecting the contents of the " Spir- 
itual Diary :" " These are the things which I have now learned 
for several years by living experience, so that they are among 
the things with which I am acquainted by instruction better 
than with other things." S. D. 3788. And again, " these 
things have been written by influx from heaven, from the 
wisdom of the angels there." 

Who, in the light of the spirit and philosophy of the 
Heavenly Doctrines, can see any evidence whatever in these 
quotations that they [the quotations] are the Lord speaking 
to Swedenborg? 

The " Spiritual Diary" is a record of facts of Swedenborg's 
" living experiences" when in society with spirits and angels. 
Did he write them in the free exercise of his own individual 
thought, and according to his own individual perception and 
understanding and end in view ? Did he write them as a man 
fully responsible for what he wrote, just as you and I and all 
men write ? Or was his freedom, and thus his responsibility, 
modified by some Divine agency outside or independent of that 
Influx ? We know of no such agency, we never heard of any ; 
we know of no agency from the Lord but what is contained in 
the influx from Him, and influx that is never in any way 
modified in its operation but by the recipient vessel. There 
is nothing implied in the fact of his " conversations with 
spirits and angels," of " thought like tacit speech communi- 
cated to him," of " things insinuated by those present," of his 
being under " their direction while thinking and writing even 
as to his hand," thus in the " experiences of facts derived in 
their own peculiar way from spirits and angels," — nothing 



96 SWEDENBORG AND THE NEW AGE. 

whatever in all this, implying that the Lord really had any- 
thing more to do with Swedenborg's diary than He has with 
the doings of all good men and angels whose sweetest delight 
is to be led by Him, or who so love to be led by Him that to 
be led otherwise would be to be led contrary to their strongest 
impulse, thus in subversion of their freedom. Such state- 
ments, therefore, from Swedenborg, contain no evidence what- 
ever that the S. D. was " written by the Lord." 

5. " Led by the Lord." 

But why does Swedenborg say, " What I have learned from 
representations, visions, and from conversations with spirits and 
angels, is from the Ixnd alone' 1 ? He also says, in close con- 
nection, " Whenever there was any representation, vision, and 
discourse, I was kept interiorly and inmostly in reflection upon 
it, as to what thence was useful and good, thus what I might 
learn therefrom. . . . Thus have I been instructed ; conse- 
quently by no spirit, nor by any angel, but by the Lord alone, 
from Whom is all truth and good ; . . . ' when they wished 
to instruct' or to persuade me, I perceived an interior or inti- 
mate persuasion that the thing was so and so, and not as they 
wished." S. D. 1647. And this means substantially that he 
was in the love of truth for the sake of use or in the good of 
love from the Lord. Thus he was led by immediate influx 
into his will, conjoined with mediate influx into his under- 
standing, thus by the Lord alone. He loved what the Lord 
loved. The Lord's love flowed into his love, — was, indeed, the 
very life of it. He saw and knew and experienced that this 
was so. How could it possibly be otherwise than that he 
should be led by the Love that filled his love when it was his 
regenerated nature, thus his greatest delight to be so led ? and 
this it was to be led by the Lord. He did nothing without 
interiorly and inmostly considering whether it was useful, 
whether he was thereby doing the good which he so loved to 
do. His love of use held him in such interior reflection. And 



MAN'S RELATION TO THE LORD. 97 

this was being led by the Lord, — that is, by the influx of Divine 
Truth into his mind, which influx is the Lord in His prac- 
tical relation to us, — but in freedom and according to his own 
thus enlightened judgment, and not by the suggestions or in- 
fluence of any spirit or angel. 

6. Swedenborg as Servant of the Lord. 

And all this shows completely and peculiarly that all his 
actions, of whatever kind, were distinctively his own ; and it 
also shows how lovingly and faithfully and unqualifiedly, and 
in all his wonderfully developed, manly faculties, he was the 
Lord's servant, — that is, the servant of all that is divinely 
good and true. He suffered himself to be led and influenced 
by no self-interest, thus by no evil spirit. He even permitted 
no good spirit or angel to instruct him without inmostly weigh- 
ing and considering everything, whether it was useful. He 
had come to be in every sense a man ; and he therefore could 
and did look to the Lord alone, the One only Source of all 
good and all truth, and acted from Him alone, and he as nat- 
urally and spontaneously did so as the flower opens its petals 
to the sun : how was it possible for him to do otherwise with- 
out doing violence to the great central element of his being, — 
namely, his indomitable love of use, — thus without annihilating 
all that constituted and ennobled his distinctive manhood? 
How preposterous, then, to talk about his acts as the Lord's 
acts, which you may with just as much propriety do as call 
any of his writings the Lord's writings ! For it was the same 
man, and with the same " good of love from the Lord" in 
him, that wrote letters and did other good deeds, who wrote 
the " Spiritual Diary'' and other books. Why call a part of his 
doings the Lord's, and not all ? Was he not identically the 
same man, and did he not receive identically the same influx 
from the Lord, whether he was lovingly serving Him in one 
way or in another ? Why the discrimination ? 

Strange that perhaps the most perfect, the most Godlike 



98 SWEDENBORG AND THE NEW AGE. 

man that ever lived, one who had become so perfectly, and 
with such splendid qualifications for one of the greatest of 
uses, the servant of the Lord, should be thus divested of his 
real manhood in his capacity as such servant, and become in 
any sense or manner or degree as a passive instrument ! and 
especially in a service in which, when truly understood, his 
peculiar and distinctive manhood was a most essential and 
indispensable element ! We find nothing whatever in the 
Writings against the statement, but everything supporting it, 
— namely, that every regenerated, manhood faculty of Sweden- 
borg's nature, and even everything of his own peculiar, indi- 
vidual character, thus of his whole man, was in the most un- 
restrained, the freest possible action, in all and every part of 
his service, when acting from and as servant of the Lord. 
And this is true of every man ; just in proportion as he is in 
a state to be led Ly and to act from the Lord, is he most free, 
is he most truly and really and livingly himself, and are his 
actions most distinctively, peculiarly, and responsibly his own ; 
and he is most emphatically a Godlike man. Swedenborg 
never could have been more livingly himself, and more a man, 
and more responsible for what he did, than while he was medi- 
tating upon the Word and writing the doctrines of the New 
Church ; and his whole history and experience, as described by 
himself, shows this. It is this fact, — namely, that Swedenborg 
was so perfectly, in every sense of the word, a man, and that 
he was so intensely a rational and a free man, and that every- 
thing that came from him came through such a Godlike and 
such a free rationality, — it is this fact, I say, that gives his 
writings such inestimable value, and such unrivalled authority 
with the Age, — with the peculiar kind of manhood humanity 
now developing and for which they are designed. It is the 
stamp of finite humanity upon them that brings them within the 
reach, and accommodates them to the wants, of a less advanced, 
and yet a progressive, regenerating state of humanity. God's 
influx into and through nature, becomes adapted to the condi- 



MAN'S RELATION TO THE LORD. 99 

tions and wants of nature ; His influx into and through perfect, 
free, rational mind, becomes adapted to the wants of such mind. 
The " Thus-saith-the-Lord" mode of revelation was adapted 
to man, or to an Age of man, incapable of rational freedom ; 
and, by a wonderful providence, in the very nature of the in- 
flux itself, the influx of Divine Truth from the Lord sponta- 
neously took, through the mediums of it, the form of prescribed 
laws and principles to be literally and blindly obeyed. There 
was no medium through which the Word, or such Influx, 
could take any other form, nor was it necessary ; there was no 
use for it as rational truth in the age in which it was given as 
" Thus saith the Lord." But authority in any such form is 
certainly not adapted to men who are not only capable of 
rational freedom, but are actually advancing into it ; and it is 
for such men, it was for an age of men, — be it remembered, — 
of men in a different and in a higher sense than ever existed 
before, that Swedenborg wrote ; and such men will have their 
rationality and their freedom cultivated, developed, and en- 
larged by a devout study of his writings and a life according 
to the beautiful and wonderful truths revealed in them. 

Yes, we confess that Swedenborg was led by the Lord ; that 
he loved, thought, wrote from the Lord. We have no doubt 
about it, — for, such is the very nature of the regenerated man, 
it could not be otherwise, — and yet he acted in freedom, acted 
according to his regenerated nature. He consciously lived and 
was led by the Lord in all that he did, — he would not have 
been the perfect man he was if it had not been so ; but 
by the Lord, it should always be remembered, is meant the 
Lord as that Influx of Divine Truth which has in it, in an 
infinite degree, every element of that manhood which it is in 
unfailing effort to beget and produce in man in a finite degree. 
Among these elements, freedom and rationality — and loving, 
thinking, and acting according to them — are pre-eminently 
and distinctively human. On these two elements rests man's 



100 SWEDENBORO AND THE NEW AGE. 

peculiar responsibility as a man. They are in him from the 
Lord, or because corresponding elements are in the Lord. 
They flow into man in the influx from the Lord. They are, 
therefore, as certain in their existence and operation in man, 
when he is in the order of the Divine Life, as is such in- 
flux. They cannot, for an instant, be suspended or inter- 
rupted in their action, by the Lord even, any more than such 
influx can be suspended. Man may lose his freedom by suf- 
fering himself to be led by self, thus by evil spirits, but never 
when led by the Lord. " The Lord leads man in freedom, and, 
so far as man permits it, by freedom leads to good." This is 
the case with all men and angels, without exception and at all 
times. The Divine influx must fail, before it can be possible 
for man to fail to receive all that is necessary from the Lord 
to make him a perfect man, thus a free man. Swedenborg 
teaches in the following passages — yet cited by others for a 
different purpose — how completely every regenerated man and 
angel is one with the Lord, as the branch with the vine, and 
is dependent upon Him, at the same time that he is most per- 
fectly and distinctively himself, and without the loss or inter- 
rupted action even of a single element of true humanity : 

" All things, yea, the smallest things of all, to the smallest 
of the smallest things, are directed by the Providence of the 
Lord, even as to the very steps." A. C. 6493. " Both men 
and spirits are compelled to think and speak as the Lord per- 
mits or grants ; for, whether I was willing or not, I was 
obliged to think and to speak. Spirits are also compelled to 
speak contrary to what they think, nor is it possible for them 
to resist," — and why? — " for," it is added, " they are admitted 
into the society of others, and thus are carried away, as it 
were, by a stream of thinking and speaking." S. D. 2099. 

Now mark this fact: this is an experience mentioned by 
Swedenborg not, by any means, to show that there was any- 
thing peculiar to him in this respect, not to show that his was 
an exceptional case, much less to show that he was, in any 



MAN'S RELATION TO THE LORD. 101 

sense or manner whatever, a passive instrument of the Lord, — 
as his language sometimes, to those ignorant of the spirit and 
philosophy of his writings, seems to imply, and as some seem 
to think, — but to show, on the contrary, that neither men, 
spirits, nor angels think or speak " of themselves." So of other 
passages seized upon so eagerly by some to show that Sweden- 
borg's freedom was, in some mysterious way, so interfered with 
by the Lord as to make his writings in no sense distinctively 
his own, as is the case with other men's writings, but exclu- 
sively and divinely the Lord's writings. 

" All men, the evil as well as the good, derive the poiver to 
think by influx from the Lord" (A. C. 1707, 2004), and 
thought flows from the Love of a man's life, and so absolutely 
so that, if there were no love, there would be no thought. 33. 
But there is interior thought and exterior thought ; men can- 
not think interiorly unless the natural be in order, as with 
the regenerate. 5168. A man who is in good is elevated 
above sensuals, or the externals of the natural, to interior 
thought. 6814. Angels think from the interior. They who 
are in love to the Lord think from perception. Perception is 
not the same as thought, but thought flows from it. 2515, 
2552. 

" They who have interior thought have also exterior 
thought." S. D. 2900. This whole paragraph, sometimes 
cited to show that Swedenborg's case was an exceptional exam- 
ple of the " double plane of thought" is headed De cognitione 
interiore [concerning interior thought], and treats of what is 
equally as applicable to all men as to Swedenborg. Sweden- 
borg in this instance, as in a great many others, simply de- 
scribes his own experience as an illustrative example. Yet 
this, like other passages, has sometimes been cited as if it was 
Swedenborg's own exclusive experience. " In this interior 
thought," says one, " the Lord was constantly present with 
Swedenborg, and He thence dictated to him what to write, what 
to speak, and what to do," thus reiterating, as has been often 



102 SWEDENBORG AND THE NEW AGE. 

done, the great fallacious idea that the Lord, hy special motive 
or effort on His own part, did something for Swedenborg that 
He does not do for other men ! 

Here is another passage which has been quoted for the 
same purpose, but unfairly, because without the qualifying 
context. Swedenborg says (S. D. 484) : "lam gifted with a 
double thought, one interior, the other exterior." The appear- 
ance is, without the context and without a knowledge of the 
heading of this section, that Swedenborg's case was an excep- 
tional one in this respect. But read the whole section, and 
you will see that Swedenborg meant to teach no such thing ; 
that he speaks of his own case here as different, not from that 
of regenerated men and angels, but from that of spirits. 

" They who are in the spiritual affection of truth are ele- 
vated into the light of heaven, even so as to perceive the 
illustration. [A general truth.] It was given me to see this 
illustration and to perceive distinctly what comes from the 
Lord, and what from the angels." [Swedenborg's case plainly 
an illustrative example of the above.] A. E. 1183. 

" Those to whom the Lord has granted perception are able 
to know who in a society and who outside of it flow into tbcir 
thoughts and into their speech, and indeed in a most exquisite 
manner, by the good pleasure of the Lord." S. D. 2100. 
This and the following are statements only of a general prin- 
ciple : 

" Tliose who are led by the Lord have a certain interior 
perception or intuition in respect to those things which are 
to be done, especially during the act of doing," etc., etc. S. D. 
892. 

" As those who are led by the Lord perceive what they 
ought to do, and indeed in a manner not intelligible by others, 
so also they are persuaded what they ought to know, likewise 
in a spiritual manner, not intelligible to others." S. D. 1405. 

" During an hour's experience it was shown me how all 
thoughts are ruled by the Lord. There wa.i an influx like that 



MAN'S RELATION TO THE LOUD. 103 

of the softest and almost imperceptible stream whose vein does 
not appear, yet it leads and draws. That which flowed in from 
the Lord led every series of my thoughts in succession, and 
although softly, yet strongly, so that I could by no means stray 
away into other thoughts, which it was permitted me to try to 
do, but in vain." A. C. (H74. His own experience, again, 
only an illustrative example of how "all thoughts arc ruled 
by the Lord." 

" Man is ruled by the Lord by means of angels and spirits." 
" The thoughts of a man who is in faith are not his ; when 
they are evil, they are of evil spirits ; . . . when good, they 
are the Lord's only." S. D. 1910. A general statement, 
again. 

" Only they who have suffered themselves to be regenerated 
by the Lord, act from freedom itself, according to reason 
itself." D. P. 98. 

All these are general principles, and Swedenborg gives a 
great many illustrations of them in his own experience. The 
fact of his being led by the Lord, ruled by the Lord, controlled 
in his thoughts by the Lord, impelled, instigated, dictated to, 
and the like, by the Lord, is common to him and all other re- 
„ generated men. All things relating to his own peculiar expe- 
rience, though often having the appearance of being due to 
something peculiar done for him by the Lord not done for 
other men, yet were owing entirely to his own peculiar state 
and quality as a recipient vessel ; just as it is with the garden 
which differs from all other gardens. Is the difference in this 
case owing to any difference in what is received from the sun ? 
on the contrary, is it not due entirely to the nature of the 
soil, to what is planted in it, to its cultivation, and the like ? 

7. How all IfarJs Works are the Lord's. 

All of man's works are the Lord's works when man is in 
the order of life, or just in proportion as he is in such order. 
If man were perfect, his works, his thoughts, his words, his 



104 SWEDENBORG AND THE NEW AGE. 

writings, his actions or deeds, of whatever kind, would be per- 
fectly the Lord's, and yet they would be most completely and 
most distinctively his own. Yet this is a great principle 
which, as applicable to probably the noblest, the most perfect 
specimen of finite, terrestrial humanity of which we have any 
knowledge, is, by some devoted readers of the Writings, ap- 
parently ignored. Let us consider this subject, then, a little 
further, and even at the risk of some repetition, for much 
hangs upon it. All of God's works, and even many of man's, 
are full of illustrative exemplifications of this great principle. 
The fruit of the pear-tree is God's work, God's fruit; He 
made it ; it was produced by and from Him, — entirely by and 
from Him. The same is true of the fruit of the apple-tree, 
and, in fact, of every other kind of fruit. Why, then, are 
these fruits so different ? is the question. We answer, Because 
of the difference of the mediums — the Lord's instruments, 
the Lord's servants — through which they were produced or 
evolved ; because the pear-tree is different as a recipient vessel, 
thus as an agent of the Lord, from the apple-tree ; becau.se 
the distinctive organisms of the two trees are different. Now 
it is that in the fruit which is derived from the distinctive or- 
ganism of the tree, that makes it the fruit of that tree rather 
than of some other tree ; and it is exactly this, nothing 
else, that makes such fruit distinctively THAT tree's work at 
the same time that it is the Lord's work. And we should 
never say that one tree's work was either its own work or the 
Lord's work in any other sense than that in which we should 
say the same of the fruits of all trees. Each and all have 
what is distinctively their own in them as well as what belongs 
to the Lord. The influx is the Lord's, but its peculiar mode 
of operation, which is different in all recipient vessels, is dis- 
tinctively their own ; for this, in all cases, depends upon their 
quality. The same is true also of all animal organisms and 
their fruits or works ; there is that which is their own and 
that which is the Lord's in them all. The same is true also of 



MAN'S RELATION TO THE LORD. 105 

men as instruments or servants of other men, as the tree or 
animal, or man himself, is of the Lord. A man builds a 
house; yes, he builds it, even though he lift not up a .single 
tool upon it; and yet just as truly the architect, the mason, 
the carpenter, and the joiner build it. Each and all put them- 
selves into it and leave their mark upon it, the employees as 
well as the employer; just as is the case with the tree in re- 
lation to its fruit. Each says, This and this and that are 
my work ; the master says, and he who devises the plans 
and gives the directions says, It is all my work. Such are 
men, all men, in their relation to the Lord. There is that 
which is their own, and there is that which is the Lord's, in 
all that they do. Swedenborg was in no instance, in nothing 
whatever that he did, an exception. There never was, never 
can be, an exception. All that he ever wrote, all that he ever 
did, was the Lord's and was also his own. Different from other 
men, he saw and acknowledged what was from the Lord. 
And he did this, and he could do it, because he was in a state 
to live and act so completely from the Lord, which is a state 
of internal perception. His writings were as much his own at 
the same time that they were the Lord's, as mine are mine, and 
there was as much of himself in them, and even more, the dif- 
ference being, not in what the Lord did, — for this was the same 
to him as to me, — but in the difference between his self and 
my self, his self being a more pure and more perfect servant of 
the Lord than mine ; just as the faithful and obedient mechanic 
who has no selfish fancies or plans or projects of his own to 
interfere with his employer's wishes, is a more perfect servant 
of the builder than the one who " lifts up his own tool" upon 
the work. The great difference between Swedenborg's writ- 
ings and those of other men, is that there is no antagonism, no 
incongruity or want of unity, between what is his own and 
what is the Lord's in them ; which cannot be said of the works 
of unregenerate men. 

Thus our conclusion is an inevitable one, — that all that the 



106 SWEDENBORG AND THE NEW AGE. 

Lord had to do with Swedenborg's writings, as with other 
men's writings, was to give him, precisely as to other men, 
the Divine Influx ; and that, therefore, all that is in any sense 
special or remarkable about them is owing alone to recipient 
conditions furnished by his own mind. As writings, therefore, 
they are wholly and purely and exclusively his own, not the 
Lord's ; his own writings just as much as your writings, your 
speech, or your works of whatever kind, are your own ; just as 
much as the fruit borne by any tree is its own, and in a similar 
sense. The fruit of a tree is from the Lord, but not as fruit, 
except indirectly through the organism of the tree ; it is the 
tree's fruit in so far as the tree has put its impress upon it, or 
has put the results of its operations as a tree into it and made 
it fruit. Just so Swedenborg's writings are his in so far as he 
has put the impress of his mind upon them, or has put the 
results of the operations of his mind into them, by the pro- 
cesses of formulating from living truth verbal statements of 
truth, which is purely a process of finite faculty. His writings 
are noble fruit ; but they are not divine, any more than any 
other fruit, coming through the modifying conditions of finite 
mediums or instruments, is divine. It was Divine Truth that 
Swedenborg received; but that was the "Spirit of Truth," 
not cogitated, idealized, and thus finited, verbalized, truth. 
Divine truth ceases to be Divine after passing through finiting 
conditions, however pure and perfect those conditions might be. 



CHAPTER V. 

HIS CALL AND PREPARATION. 

1. The Lord Appeared to Him. 

But the Lord " appeared" or " manifested Himself" to Swc- 
denborg. Much is made of this fact to show that the Lord 
had given him a " particular influx," " special inspiration," 
and had him in a most extraordinary manner under His direc- 
tion, using the words " particular," " special," and " extra- 
ordinary" in a sense akin to that of miraculous, as the latter 
term is commonly understood. And to one ignorant of the phi- 
losophy of the New Church, Swedenborg's language encourages 
such a view. The appearance, from what Swedenborg says, is 
that the Lord is a, fruited personage in the heavens, and that 
He actually came and presented Himself "before Swedenborg, 
especially from the following, viz. : " The Lord manifested Him- 
self in person before me, and sent me to fill this office, in 17-43." 
Some readers of Swedenborg seem to entertain this view of the 
Lord and of His relation to Swedenborg. On this view, mainly, 
seems to be founded the extraordinary claim for Swedenborg's 
writings as " the Lord's writings." We grant this is Sweden- 
borg's mode of speaking ; the appearance sometimes is that 
the Lord and Swedenborg had personal interviews, and that 
they really talked with each other as man with man. But we 
must not give such expressions of Swedenborg an interpreta- 
tion inconsistent with his philosophy ; for, according to his 
philosophy, the Lord's relation to Swedenborg was precisely 
like His relation to other men, — namely, as so often repeated, 
by influx, and only by influx. There is great danger of mis- 

107 



108 SWEDENBORG AND THE NEW AGE. 

taking appearances, or what Swedenborg calls " real appear- 
ances," for realities. Such appearances depend not at all 
upon anything different that the Lord does at the time of such 
manifestations from what He does at other times, — for He, in 
what He does, is as invariable and unchangeable as the sun, — 
but they depend alone and entirely upon the operation of His 
influx, and this operation again depends exclusively upon the 
nature of the recipient mind to whom the manifestation is 
made. It is just as it is with the sun of the material heavens, 
His great examplar in the physical world. All variety in the 
sun's appearances or manifestations of himself is owing entirely 
to the variety in the recipiency of his radiance, of his influx. 
A regenerated state of mind is indispensable to the kind of 
manifestation of the Lord made to Swedenborg, and " a con- 
junction of mediate and immediate influx" is one of the essen- 
tial conditions. And such conjunction " cannot be given but in 
good, for good is the very ground." When the conjunction of 
mediate and immediate influx takes place in man, " then the 
Lord appears as though He were present, and His presence is 
also perceived." A. C. 7056. " The Lord is present only in 
the celestial things of charity, and in these He appears to man." 
1442. The Lord appears to the celestial angels as a sun, 
and to the spiritual angels as a moon. He so appeared to 
Swedenborg, he being consciously associated with the angels 
as their equal (in certain respects). Swedenborg says that, in 
reading the Lord's prayer, he always apperceived that there 
was an influx from the Lord into each of the things of the 
prayer, thus into each of the ideas of his thought, which were 
from the meaning of the things contained in the prayer. . . . 
It was made manifest how infinite things were in the expres- 
sions of the prayer, and that the Lord was present in each. 
6476. 

Thus Swedenborg's case — in regard to the Lord's appearing 
to him — was exceptional onl)* in the sense in which every man's 
case is exceptional ; what was exceptional was owing entirely 



HIS CALL AND PREPARATION. 109 

to his exceptional state of recipiency, just as it is with all 
men and angels. 

But a word more in regard to such appearances or manifes- 
tations of the Lord. We must always bear in mind that they 
are what Swedenborg calls them, — namely, " appearances" or 
"manifestations," — and that they depend entirely upon the 
states of those who seem to themselves to see what is only an 
appearance or manifestation, but a real one. Swedenborg says, 
"there are real appearances and those not real;" the " real" in 
them is owing to that, in the states of those who see them, on 
which the appearances depend as real appearances. The real 
cause, for example, of the beautiful things appearing outwardly 
to the angels is in the angels themselves. The Lord appears 
outside the angels ; but is He outside of them? " The king- 
dom God is within you," and He is within, most inmostly 
within, His kingdom. He appears as a sun or moon, or as a 
" black, dark thing ;" but is He such, with rounded and limited 
outline ? He ap>pears at a middle altitude ; but is it because 
He is there more than elsewhere ? He so appears " in what- 
ever direction the angels turn themselves /" Does Swedenborg 
mean to say that the Lord ever actually stood before him and 
talked to him, told him what to do, what to write, etc. ? Does 
not his philosophy say rather that this was an appearance 
owing to his state, owing to the peculiar operation of influx 
from the Lord in him, as affected or modified by his state? If 
we take all his statements as literally true, — which he never 
meant we should do, — without regard to their meaning in the 
light of his philosophy, we shall be led into the most bewilder- 
ing confusion. 

2. " Specicdly Qucdifiied." 

All uses are special, and therefore require that which is 
special in preparation for them. Swedenborg was not an ex- 
ception to the universal law in this respect. His case was 
exceptional only in the degree of the special, just as has been 



110 SWEDENBORG AND THE NEW AGE. 

the case with other men. He had a use to perform unlike 
that of any other man, and a use which was special in an ex- 
traordinary degree. But all that was special in his prepara- 
tion for his office or use was owing to what was special in the 
potential germ of his being, or in his capacity for such prepa- 
ration. There was nothing added to him. His preparation 
was simply a development of capabilities already potentially in 
him. In this his case was precisely like that of every other 
man. If a tree bears acorns instead of walnuts, it is not be- 
cause of any difference in the sunshine that falls upon it, in 
the air which it breathes, in the rains that give it drink, or in 
the soil from which it grows, but because of the undeveloped 
possibilities of acorns, instead of walnuts, in its germinal state. 
If an organ of the body is an eye instead of an ear, it is be- 
cause it was first an eye, instead of an ear, in possibility. And 
so also if the germ was the germ of an oak, instead of the germ 
of a walnut-tree, in possibility, it was not because of any dif- 
ference in its primal origin in the great First Cause, but be- 
cause of the conditions under which it became a germ. An 
acorn is an acorn instead of a walnut because an oak furnishes 
different conditions from those of a walnut-tree for the opera- 
tion of life from the One only Source of Life. So of the 
fruits of all other trees or plants ; so of the eggs, or seeds, or 
germs of all animals ; so also of the finited beginnings of all 
human beings. All cause of anything special or extraordinary 
is in the recipient conditions. 

Here we have exemplified a universal principle, and, how- 
ever strong may be appearances to the contrary, there are no 
exceptions to it, none whatever. It is the ignoring of this 
principle — which is as unchangeable in its operation as God 
Himself— that has led to such absurd conclusions in regard 
both to Swedenborg's preparation for his mission and also to 
his performance of the duties of his office. According to the 
representations of some, Swedenborg seems to have been a 
private pupil of the Lord, who took special pains with him, 



HIS CALL AND PREPARATION. Ill 

and gave him a- different kind of training from what He ever 
gave any other man, — somewhat as a parent or teacher some- 
times docs a child, — or just as if the sun of the natural heaven 
should take under its most particular charge some little germ 
of a tree, — like that of the California giant cedar, for example, 
— and should, in addition to giving it the fulness of its radi- 
ance, as to other trees, do for it, in some mysterious and extra- 
ordinary way, and with a certain end in view, something dif- 
ferent from what it does for other trees; or just as if some- 
thing special and extraordinary were added to the influx from 
the brain and heart, to prepare an eye or ear or hand for 
some extraordinary office or function. Such a thing is impos- 
sible. To suppose that God can do anything extraordinary, 
or outside the natural and uniform operation of influx from 
Him, farther than what is extraordinary is due entirely to re- 
cipient state and conditions, is to show a culpable ignorance of 
God in His relation to the universe. 

According to our understanding of the revelations of the 
Lord in the Writings, influx from the Lord flowed into certain 
existing conditions to produce Swedenborg's germinal or poten- 
tial being, precisely as it always has done to produce the germ- 
inal or potential being of all other men ; and then it flowed 
into his germ of being, and ever after continued to flow into 
it, during all its stages of development and of preparation for 
his mission, precisely as it flows into all men. Swedenborg 
became the extraordinary man he was, and performed the 
extraordinary use he did, because, and solely because, of 
the extraordinary conditions furnished by his nature for the 
operation of that influx" from the Lord which is the same to 
all. 

Thus there was really nothing special in Swedenborg's case, 
except so far as it was made so by special conditions furnished 
by his own being for the operations of the Divine Influx, just 
as is the case with all men. There is never any change or 
deviation in the Divine Influx, except in its operations as af- 



112 SWEDENBORG AND THE NEW AGE. 

fected by recipient conditions. God never changes, either in 
what He is or in what He does. Infinite love and infinite wis- 
dom can never change. Is it because the sunbeam changes, 
or because of a special form or mode of action of the sun, that 
the rose is red and the lily white ? Is it because of change 
in the stream, or in the channel, that the water now calmly 
moves, and as if it did not move, and now foams and boils, 
and now dashes and leaps and carries destruction before it ? 
There is nothing special, in any case, in what flows in from the 
Lord ; all that is special, in all cases, is in the state of the re- 
cipient, If there is ever a special action of Providence, it is 
always because of special recipient conditions which cause the 
deviation of such action. Any special action of life in the 
body is not in the life, but in the body. Swedenborg was pre- 
pared for his mission, and every other man for his mission, by 
the same Divine action, so far as God was concerned. It was 
only the same Influx into different recipient conditions. The 
same Divine Influx into men of different constitutional tastes, 
genius, and capacities results in qualifications for different uses 
in life, just as the same influx from heart and brain into dif- 
ferent germinal forms results in the development of different 
organs and members and offices of the body. It sometimes 
seems as if God purposely caused the Divine Influx to deviate 
from its normal action ; but this is only an appearance. When 
any part of the body is wounded, it seems as if heart and 
brain went immediately to work, by a special action of their own 
organism, to repair the injury ; but this is only an appearance, 
for nothing different, in any sense, flows out from the heart 
and brain. True, there is special action, remedial action, but 
caused by the condition of the organism, for only the same 
influx enters it that entered it before the injury, or that enters 
healthy organism. 

There is a grand and beautiful principle here, if we can see 
it, illustrative of the operation of the Divine Influx in wicked 
men, or in diseased or disordered spiritual organism. The 



HIS CALL AND PREPARATION. 113 

same influx, in all cases and always, carries with it, carries in 
it, inherent in its own nature, every remedial resource ; so that 
it instantly and spontaneously becomes remedial on entering 
disordered organism. It is the very nature of the disorder to 
make the action of the influx remedial, thus special, and ap- 
parently so by special design or purpose. How can it be other- 
wise when we understand the real nature of the influx, — that 
every attribute is intensely present in every instant's action of 
the influx ; that the influx carries all its resources with it and 
in it ; that it keeps and needs keep nothing in reserve. And 
how comforting the fact that our God, — our Life and our Light, 
— and with every attribute in intensest operation, is always in us, 
and instantly and spontaneously applying the remedy, and the 
divinely best remedy, for every disordered condition, — that it is, 
indeed, impossible for Him to fail to do this ; thus, that, wherever 
we are, in heaven or in hell, and whatever we are, angel or devil, 
He is unchangeably the same, the same in what He is and in 
what He does ; and that it is impossible for what He does, as 
varied in its action by our state, to be otherwise than what is 
best for us, — that such varied action is, in fact, most specially 
adapted to our condition. And what follows ? And this may 
make my meaning plainer, if there is, as yet, any obscurity. 
The action, for example, of the Divine Influx, as varied by an- 
gelic state or conditions, would be most terrible torture, if not 
actual destruction, to infernal organism. What would be the 
effect of influx from heart and brain, as varied in its action by 
liealtliy conditions, upon diseased organism ? Is not this, then, 
what is meant by " special Providence" : that it is Providence, 
or the Divine Influx, as varied in its action by special states 
or conditions, and always with Infinite Love and Infinite Wis- 
dom, and in its results, for that which, in the conditions and 
under the circumstances, is best ? 

It seems to me to be a want of recognition of this grand and 
unchangeable principle of the Divine Nature, — namely, that 
God, so far as His own inherent action is concerned, is the 
6* 



114 SWEDENBORG AND THE NEW AGE. 

same, in all conditions and under all circumstances, — that has 
led men to set up such strange and irrational claims in regard 
to Swedenborg and his writings ; and that has led to such a 
misunderstanding of what Swedenborg says about himself, as 
to make his own experience contradict his own philosophy ; as 
to make the Lord, for example, do something for him, with a 
view to his preparation for his mission, that He does not do 
for other men. This, so far, finites and degrades God down to 
the revel of a mechanic or tutor acting from expediency. 
And the whole spirit and philosophy of the Writings contra- 
dict any and every such view of God's action or relation to 
man. 

3. His Call. 

Swedenborg was " called by the Lord," we admit, " to a 
holy office." But how was he called? Precisely as other 
men, all men, are called. What did the call consist in ? It 
consisted, with him, as with other men, in a constitutional 
" bent'''' or inclination of his mind to certain pursuits ; it was 
an inborn, natural taste for certain studies and certain uses in 
life. All men are called by the Lord' each to some specific 
use, profession, or business, and one no more than another. 
And there is no difference in the calls, none whatever, so far 
as the Lord's agency in them is concerned : He is " no re- 
specter of persons," or of professions or businesses. It is the 
peculiar form, quality, or disposition of the mind itself as a 
recipient of the Divine Influx, that makes the call. Some 
have a more marked or decided bent, thus a more decided, 
more appreciable, or louder call, than others. Some manifest 
this bent earlier in life than others. Mozart had a very early 
call to be a great musical composer ; Franklin, to be a philoso- 
pher ; Colburn, to be a mathematician ; Napoleon, to be a war- 
rior. To some who are peculiarly constituted and sensitive to 
spiritistic influences the call may seem to come through such 
influences, in audible tones even. But this is owing entirely 
to the peculiar character of the subject. The Lord has no 



HIS CALL AND PREPARATION. 115 

more to do, really, with such calls than with all others. Svvc- 
denborg manifested a love for certain intellectual pursuits early 
in life; but these were not limited to one channel, as mathe- 
matics alone, natural history alone, or ethics alone. His mind 
indicated great breadth and very great versatility, even in his 
childhood. There was a clear prophecy of the man in the 
child. His was a very remarkable mind, — it was mi generis. 
None like it had ever existed. Such breadth, such depth, 
such perspicacity, — there was a significance that none could 
interpret, a future that none could read ; for it was to be 
most unlike the developed future of any previously existing 
youth, that of Shakspeare, for example, or Milton, or Bacon, 
or Humboldt. The world was not in a state to foresee or 
expect anything like such a future. It was to be an entirely 
new problem, and one upon which, even now, after that 
future has come and gone, men— " great men," "wise men" 
— look with amazement and bewilderment ; they are not even 
now prepared for even the announcement of the problem of 
the revelation made to human thought by Swedenborg's life 
and works, and much less are they prepared for the solution 
of the problem, for the understanding of the vast significance 
of his life and mission. 

4. His Preparation. 

Such was Swedenborg's call : it was as the acorn's call to 
become an oak, or the egg's call to become a bird, which 
are equally by the Lord. Everything in his primal being 
pointed to his mission, just as much as everything in the seed 
points to the future tree, or everything in the egg to the future 
bird. But this was no more true of him than of all men. 
What was remarkable and exceptional in his case was his de- 
velopment wad. preparation for his work. And in what was he 
different from other men in this respect? He was different in 
this, — namely, in that he followed, and sought most diligently to 
follow, the leadings of Providence ; in that he listened so heed- 



116 SWEDENBORG AND THE NEW AGE. 

fully to the voice of the Lord in the dictates of conscience ; 
in that he so unceasingly studied and meditated upon the 
Word, and did so for the sake of learning the true way of 
life ; and thus in that he suffered himself to be so completely 
led and governed by the Lord, but by the Lord, it should 
always be remembered, as that influx of Divine Truth which 
filled, and whose very nature it was to give free, rational, and 
thus true, responsible manhood to, every faculty of his being. 
He was, indeed, in this sense, the Lord's most faithful and 
obedient pupil or disciple during his whole course of prepa- 
ration. He was, every moment of his pupilage or preparation 
for his use, most completely himself, and in the highest sense 
of the word his own master ; but only so far as, at the same 
time, he Avas wholly and completely the Lord's, and followed 
undeviatingly His leadings. For so far, and only so far, as one 
is the Lord's he is his own ; and just so far, and only so far, 
as he serves the Lord does he, in the highest and best and 
truest sense of the word, serve himself; for by such service, 
and only by such service, he makes all that the Lord gives him 
his own, but his own as a steward, — makes himself, indeed, one 
with the Lord, as the branch is one with the vine. To serve 
the Lord is not to worship Him, not idolatrously to adore and 
praise Him, as most people suppose. Worship and praise are 
incidental, are simply the result of a spontaneous overflow of 
love and thanksgiving, are only the expression of a heart 
made warm and full by real, loving service. We serve the 
Lord by serving others, — that is, by being His instruments in 
doing the work which He is in the constant effort to do. The 
case is as it is with the service of men : we do not serve men 
by worshipping and praising them, but by aiding them in their 
work; and just as the branch serves the vine by bearing its 
fruit, or as any organ or member of the body serves the brain 
by obeying its impulses. Such was Swedenborg's service of 
the Lord all along the pathway of his preparation for his 
final work, — for his education for that work consisted mainly 



HIS CALL AND PREPARATION. 117 

in performing uses for the sake of his fellow-men, — and he was, 
all along, day by day, seeking knowledge for the sake of such 
uses ; day by day he consulted the Lord, by reading and med- 
itating upon the Word, to learn what He would have him do, 
to find out how he could best serve Him. And the Lord in- 
structed him by giving him light, thus by giving him intuitive 
perception of what He would have him do. In this was the 
secret of Swedenborg's great pow'er : it was the power of the 
Lord in him. He earnestly desired to be led by the Lord, — 
by the Lord as the very Spirit of Truth, — and this enabled the 
Lord, by His influx as such Spirit of Truth, to lead him and 
guide him and give him the required strength. It was in this 
that he differed so widely from other men ; it was not in what 
the Lord sought to do for him, but in what his state enabled 
the Lord to do for him. Yet some men are — mistakenly, we 
think — constantly inculcating the idea that the Lord did some- 
thing for Swedenborg, and sought to do something for him that 
He does not do, and does not seek to do, for other men, and 
because of Swedenborg's intended peculiar mission, just as if 
all the difference was in what the Lord did, and not in what 
Swedenborg was, as differing from other men. Thus it is 
claimed that the Lord, in a peculiar, exceptional way, directed 
Swedenborg, both by mediate and by immediate influx, in re- 
gard to everything pertaining to his special mission, and the 
following has been quoted in proof: 

" From my past life, I was able to see that everything therein 
was governed by the Lord by means of those things that had 
been produced or done by me." S. D. 3177. 

Now this applies no more to Swedenborg than to every hu- 
man being. The whole paragraph whence this sentence is 
taken is under the caption, " That the Lord rules the human 
race in the very smallest particulars." And what Swedenborg 
says of his own case he mentions as an illustration of this 
fact ; and, what is remarkable, considering the use that has 
been made of this citation, Swedenborg speaks in the same 



118 SWEDENBORG AND THE NEW AGE. 

short paragraph of another, a very wicked man, who was in 
like manner governed by the Lord " in the most singular 
things !" 

The following passage, which has been cited also in immediate 
connection with the above, and therefore for the same purpose, 
is very interesting as teaching the same general truth of the par- 
ticularity of the Lord's providence in relation to men, — to all 
men, — and not to Swedenborg alone, or as an exceptional case. 
Adv. I. vol. iii. 839 : 

" What the acts of my life involved I could not distinguish 
at the time when they happened, but, by the Divine mercy 
of God-Messiah, I was informed with regard to some, and 
even with respect to many, particulars. From these I was 
at last able to see that the Divine Providence had governed 
the acts of my life uninterruptedly from my very youth, 
and directed them in such a manner that, by means of the 
knowledge of natural things, I was enabled to reach a state of 
intelligence, and thus, by the Divine mercy of God-Messiah, 
to serve as an instrument for opening those things which 
are hidden interiorly in the Word of God-Messiah. Those 
things, therefore, are now made manifest which hitherto were 
not manifest." 

Yes, we all acknowledge it. Providence " governed" and 
" directed" Swedenborg in regard to all the acts of his life, 
even from his " very youth" ; but we deny that Swedenborg 
was in any sense or manner exceptional in this, and he nowhere 
claims to have been exceptional as regards what the Lord did 
fur him,. The Lord simply flowed into him as he teas, precisely 
as He flows into all other men ; and the operation of such in- 
flux in its government and direction was, in Swedenborg's case, 
as in all other cases, qualified or made exceptional by his pe- 
culiar state of recipiency. But the above passage is interest- 
ing and instructive as showing how uninterruptedly and how 
thoroughly every human being is under the Lord's Providence. 
And the end of such Providence is — equally with all, as with 



HIS CALL AND PREPARATION. 119 

Swedenborg — their best possible qualification for fulfilling their 
mission ; for every human being has a mission as much as Swe- 
denborg had. 

Swedenborg says that he was prepared for his office from 
his infancy. How full of meaning ! "What was his office ? 
He had, we may say, a succession of offices, but all looking to 
the one great office of explaining the Bible. This was a reve- 
lation from Grod in speech. What qualifications were required 
for such explanation ? I answer: a perception of the Word in 
its real nature as the Spirit of Truth, and a mind well stored 
with a knowledge of the revelation of the same Word in 
nature. His mind was prepared for such perception in the 
one only way by which it could be prepared, — namely, by re- 
generation, as before shown. This opened his mind to the 
light of heaven, which is nothing else than the light of the 
Word as the Spirit of Truth, which is the light of its spiritual 
sense. He says that " the Lord opened the interiors of his 
spirit." Of course the Lord did it, but the Lord as the Word 
did it. Neither Swedenborg nor any other man ever knew 
any other Lord than the Lord as the Word. But the Lord 
opened the interiors of Swedenborg's spirit in no other sense 
and in no other way than that in which He opens the interiors 
of every man's spirit, when he comes into a state to have them 
thus opened, — that is, by his regeneration. There was no me- 
chanical or artificial process of opening ; there was no special 
operation on the part of the Divine, except so far as normal 
operation was made special by recipient conditions. The sun 
opens the interiors — if I may so speak, for the sake of illustra- 
tion — of the flower-bud, but of all flower-buds alike, so far as 
the sun is concerned ; but it does this only after it has, little 
by little, brought the bud into a condition to be opened, when 
it, as it were, spontaneously opens as the sunbeams fall upon 
it. The sun does not artificially force the bud open, as it were, 
by a certain process of manipulation, as the child would do, 
and as it would seem as if the Lord did, according to the 



120 SWEDENBORG AND THE NEW AGE. 

views of some, when He opened the interiors of Swedenborg's 
spirit. The Lord really did nothing for Swedenborg in this 
case that He does not ecpially for all, and just as He does for 
all. The only thing exceptional was in Swedenborg's state as 
to recipiency. 

But when one is regenerated up into a state of spiritual 
perception, his degree or kind or extent of illustration, when 
he reads the Word, depends upon his intellectual development, 
and also upon his stores of knowledge of the Word as revealed 
in Nature. When a man's interiors are open he has illustra- 
tion, and thus revelation from perception, when he reads the 
Word, but in measure, or extent and variety, according to the 
light which he is capable of having by means of the knowl- 
edges belonging to him. A. C. 10,400. That is to say, the 
intellectually learned man, if in a state of perception, has, 
while reading the Word, larger or intenser illustrations, so to 
speak, than the unlearned man. It was in this respect that 
Swedenborg was so much in advance of other men who may 
have been in a similar state of perception or illustration. His 
learning was vast, though, perhaps, not greater than that of 
some others. His excellence — excellence as regards the use 
he had to perform — was not so much in the extent as in the 
kind of his knowledge. His knowledge was peculiarly that of 
the Word, of the Word in its revelations of itself in Sacred 
Scripture, and also in its revelations of itself in nature. His 
great study through life was the Word, and the Word as re- 
vealed in Nature as well as in Sacred Scripture. This was a 
most important part of his " preparation by the Lord" for his 
great mission. In this he faithfully followed the leadings of 
Providence ; and this is the reason why he was so successful in 
it. Swedenborg was prepared for his office, like all men each 
for his own work, on the same principle that the heart or any 
other organ of the body is prepared for its function, which is 
by influx into its own peculiar form and conditions, and by its 
own action. That is to say, the difference is not in what the 



HIS CALL AND PREPARATION. 121 

Lord does, is not in the influx, but is in recipient state and 
conditions. 

5. Not a Prodigy, 

Swedenborg was no prodigy, as some seem to teach, and to 
teach for the purpose of showing that the Lord at length 
made something out of him, by a particular and exceptional 
process of manipulation, as it were, by whom, as a sort of 
intensely active, yet mysteriously passive, instrument, He could 
accomplish a certain object. In proof of which they cite the 
following : 

" I know, from my own case, that in the parts of my office 
I am instructed by experience only, without the memory of 
particulars." S. D. 888. 

" By which Swedenborg means," it is said, " that in every- 
thing that concerns his office — i.e., 'his teaching of the doc- 
trines of the New Church by the Word from the Lord' — he 
was not directed by his own thought on the things contained 
in his natural memory, which in the ' Spiritual Diary' he 
calls the ' memory of particulars,' but was governed by the 
Lord by an influx into his will, of which he remained uncon- 
scious until it manifested itself by ' experience,' or by the acts 
of his life. And by this influx," it is added, " the Lord gov- 
erned the particulars of Swedenborg's thought, and also the 
particular influx which he received from spirits." 

Now read the whole paragraph from which the above cita- 
tion from the " Spiritual Diary" was made. Here it is (Swe- 
denborg had been speaking of the " interior memory"} : 

" In regard to this interior memory, and the manner in 
which knowledges are insinuated into spirits, it cannot be 
otherwise known than from those things which occur in the 
life of the body, as that a man from infancy learns to speak, 
learns to think, and this more and more, still without knowing 
in what manner these things are insinuated, still less how the 
faculties of understanding, thinking, judging, and concluding 
have been insinuated. Just as when an adult is learning Ian- 



122 SWEDENBORG AND THE NEW AGE. . 

guagcs, so I have known, from my own case, that in the parts 
of my office I have in like manner been instructed by expe- 
rience only, without the memory of particulars." And here 
Swedenborg adds, parenthetically (" these things are said solely 
that it may be understood what is the nature of that memory, 
and not that they may be inserted concerning myself'). 

It is impossible to see any indication whatever in this para- 
graph, or in any dissevered part of it even, that the Lord's 
treatment of Swedenborg was in any sense or manner excep- 
tional or peculiar. The lesson of the paragraph is a general 
one, and no more applies to Swedenborg than to all men. If 
he " was governed by the Lord by an influx into his will, of 
which he remained unconscious until it manifested itself by 
' experience,' or by the acts of his life," so are all men and 
angels so governed ; if this made, so far, a tool of Swedenborg, 
— and this seems to be the conclusion of some, — it does so of 
all men and angels. So, also, if Swedenboi-g learned by his 
own experience " that the thoughts of a man who is in faith 
are not his, that when evil they are of evil spirits, . . . that 
when good they are the Lord's only," he learned it, and he 
teaches it, as a general principle, and as equally applicable 
to all. 

6. A Strident of the Natural Sciences. 

Swedenborg was most completely his own man, a perfectly 
free, responsible, moral agent, during his whole course of prep- 
aration for his work, though "led," "governed," "directed" 
by the Lord, just as other men are, so far as they permit them- 
selves to be. It was his tastes that led him in pursuit of the 
peculiar kinds of knowledge needed to fit him for his mission, 
and it was his capacity and diligence that made him proficient 
in the acquisition of such knowledge. The Lord flowed into 
and acted through his tastes and capacities. Indeed, it was 
his peculiar combination of tastes and capacities and qualities 
of heart and of intellect that virtually elected him to his pecu- 



HIS CALL AND PREPARATION. 123 

liar office or use, or rather it was the Divine influx, acting 
through that combination, that so elected him. A boy's tastes, 
as his mind opens, indicate, and frequently with unerring cer- 
tainty, what is to be his future ; they indicate whether, if he 
can follow his tastes or his bent, he is going to be an artist, a 
naturalist, a mechanic, or something else. It was so with 
Swedenborg, though there was vastly more in his future than 
any interpretation of his beginnings could possibly indicate to 
men, as men then were. We know not how to prophesy of 
the developed tree of an unknown germ or shoot. Sweden- 
borg was an extraordinary child, and this is why he became 
an extraordinary man, — the man was simply the well-developed 
child. 

Swedenborg says, " I was first introduced by the Lord into 
the natural sciences, and thus prepared." How introduced? 
Why, just as every man fond of the natural sciences is intro- 
duced to them, — namely, by following his tastes, or the indica- 
tions of influx from the Lord operating in his tastes. Here 
was indicated a future which no one, not even himself, could 
foresee. A knowledge of the natural sciences — that is, of God 
in nature — was an indispensable prerequisite to a knowledge of 
" correspondences" of which the whole Bible is composed ; yet 
he had no idea or intimation of this, — it was not necessary for 
him to have. He loved the pursuit and saw a use in it, and 
this was enough for him at the time. His works on science 
are wonderful stores of knowledge, and such as the works of 
no other author contain, ancient or modern. They are too 
profound, go too far into the secrets of nature, for even modern 
scientists to understand. It was not until he had foretoken- 
ings of his final mission that he even grasped their full sig- 
nificance. There was a meaning in his intellectual stores which 
even he did not see while he was acquiring them. He was not 
exceptional in this ; this is often the case with men of great 
missions. Thus Swedenborg says, expressing a general prin- 
ciple : " What the acts of my life involved I could not dis- 



124 SWEDENBORG AND THE NEW AGE. 

tinguish at the time when they happened ; . . . . but those 
things are now made manifest which hitherto were not mani- 
fest." Cannot some of the oldest of us bear some testimony 
to this from our own experience? Can we not "see, with 
him, that the Divine Providence has governed the acts of our 
lives uninterruptedly from our very youth," and that the Lord 
has had a specific end in view in our case, as really in his 
case ? He could look back and read the lessons of Providence 
in his experiences after they were past, though he could not 
see their meaning at the time. We can do the same, and it 
is useful to do so. 

7. Sweclenborg as a Scientist. 

Swedenborg had published his works on a wide range of 
scientific and philosophical subjects, among which are his 
treatises on metallurgy, " The Principia," " The Outlines of 
the Infinite," and " The Final Cause of Creation," " Principles 
of Chemistry," etc. He had, indeed, gone down into the 
depths and ascended into the heights on all the subjects that 
occupied his thoughts and pen, and, what is more, he turned 
them to practical use. In addition to being the profoundest 
and most versatile scientist and philosopher of his or any other 
age of the world, he was, in the fullest sense of the word, a 
practical man. Use was the great end and law of his life. It 
was because of this trait in his character, and because of his 
wonderful intelligence and practical energy, that he was a great 
favorite of his king, Charles XII. of Sweden, who ennobled 
him, and who made practical use of him in the service of his 
country. He had ranged over — rather had revelled in the 
depths of — a vast field of thought and investigation, from the 
lowest ultimates up to the beginning of things. His works on 
metallurgy and the like show what he had done on the former, 
as his "Principia" and like works on the latter. All these 
works show what a world of thought was evolved from his brain. 
He never went back, but was always going forward to greater 



HIS CALL AND PREPARATION. 125 

heights, to the investigation of profounder piinciplcs. It 
was not necessary for him always to tarry in one field. It was 
the very nature of his experience to be constantly lifting him 
up, and to unexplored heights. This was his genius, the 
peculiar character of his mind, and because he was a regener- 
ating man. Thus all nature had successively opened her 
treasures of knowledge to him. He was already standing on 
the Alps of human learning, and with his vision still reaching 
upward. Not in one department alone, but in most,— in 
science, in philosophy, in ethics, in devotion to his Maker, in 
the service of his country, and as a loving and useful citizen — 
he had risen high above his fellow-men. Take him all in all, 
he was such a man as the world had never seen. The angels 
were said to have spoken through his mouth while he lay in 
the cradle ; his manhood had, seemingly, already become the 
fulfilment of his childhood. 

Truth for Truth's Sake. 

But Swedenborg was no prodigy. He had not been lifted 
up to that high vantage-ground, nor let down from heaven, as 
" some bird of heavenly plumage fair," but had " toiled up" 
had " made himself," just like other men. The Lord had 
led him, and had led him because he could be led, because he 
submitted to the Divine dictates or promptings ; but He had 
led him precisely as He leads all men, so far as they permit 
themselves to be led. He was already the Lord's servant, just 
as all good men are, but each according to his ability and the 
peculiar form of his mind. He was rising to an unknown 
destiny as regards the future use of his capacities and his vast 
knowledge. What had been, perhaps, the most remarkable 
feature in his most remarkable character, and especially in 
that supremely selfish and wicked age of humanity, was his 
search for " truth for truth's sake," or " for the common good." 
This had now become the bright polar star of his voyage of 
life, this was the precious jewel of his character. In this 



126 SWEDENBORG AND THE NEW AGE. 

he was, perhaps, more unlike other men than in anything else. 
It was this that was now, by little and little, opening his mind 
to the light of heaven. It was this that enabled the Lord to 
lead him, and as few other men, if any, had then permitted 
themselves to be led. It was this that was the secret of his 
then dawning illumination. This was the sun of his soul, for 
it was the tabernacle of God with him. It was this that was 
setting his mind in order for a higher work, but of which he 
even yet had no definite premonition, though his whole being 
was, if its real significance could have been read, full of the 
clearest prophecy of it. It could not be read because it was 
hitherto an unknown fruit that he was to bear. 

8. The Next Step. 

Now look at him, as he then was, filled with the noblest 
impulses, every faculty yearning for the noblest action, with 
energies irrepressible for good work. What will he do with 
himself, as moved by that influx from the Lord which flows 
into all men ? What should we expect that a mind so devel- 
oped, so endowed, and so yearning for higher knowledge and 
greater use would do ? Go back, go down from that lofty 
eminence, and make a reinvestigation of nature? As well 
might the plant, after being matured for bearing noblest fruit, 
go back into the ground whence it sprung ; as well might the 
astronomer have contented himself with a reinvestigation of 
our own planet after he had got glimpses of the wonderful 
significance and power of the telescope ; as well might the 
intelligent anatomist be satisfied with his knowledge of bones 
and muscles and tissues after he had got glimpses of a world 
within and above them to explore. Swedenborg had all the 
knowledge he need have, or could have, of the gross ultimates 
of being until the world of causes was opened to him. He 
was already master, we may say, of nature. But how to go 
farther, this was the cpucstion. It was a comparatively simple 
matter to investigate effects ; but how to rise to invisible, intan- 



BIS CALL AND PREPARATION. 127 

gible causes, this was the question. Swcdenborg had satisfied 
himself that there was a cause above nature, though down in 
it. What would be the spontaneous impulse of a mind en- 
dowed like his but to make an effort, at least, to reach that 
cause ? He believed that the body had a spiritual counterpart, 
or soul : could he do less than try to learn its whereabouts and 
relation to the body ? 

This had been a subject of earnest inquiry by learned men. 
But it was all speculation ; their modes did not suit him. His 
form of reasoning was that of analysis, — that is, from effects 
to causes, or from the known to the unknown. It was a 
" Jacob's ladder" that he was climbing, — a ladder resting on 
solid ground and its top lost in the skies. He had planted 
his foot on the lowest rundle, and then ascended, step by step, 
as he got sight of higher ones. He was now standing on the 
topmost one visible from earth or accessible by any appliances 
of natural science. He was gazing still upward, and searching, 
but in vain, for some clue that could guide him still higher. 
But his intellectual vision, as yet, could not penetrate the dark- 
ness. What should he do ? What could he do ? Did he 
fall upon his knees and pray God by an arbitrary fiat to re- 
move the darkness ? He knew that there was no efficacy in a 
prayer of mere words or thoughts, or feelings even. Did the 
Lord come to him in an extraordinary manner and. because 
he was so nearly prepared for his mission, take him more 
especially under His charge and lead him to the light he so 
much desired ? Nothing like it ; the Lord never acts in this 
way. The Lord did nothing for him that He had not always 
been doing. The Lord gave him light, as He had always done, 
gave him all he could bear, filled his vessel full, and en- 
couraged him, as before, to journey onward and upward, to 
follow the clue which the light of heaven and of his own expe- 
rience would give him. And this was enough. All that he 
needed was to work on, as before, making the most, day by 
day, of his new experiences, which were constantly increasing 



128 SWEDENBORG AND THE NEW AGE. 

in their prophetic, but as yet hidden, significance. He was, 
indeed, nearly ripe for revelations of a more interior kind than 
he had ever experienced before. 

9. His Search for the Soul. 
But his mind needed yet the discipline of another kind of 
investigation. The soul now, and her relation to the body, 
became the object of his pursuit. How and where should he 
find her? This was a new inquiry, and required the exercise 
of new capacities, but which had all along been developing, 
and which were now ready for service. If he would find the 
soul, he said, he must " seek her in her own palace." And to 
find her there he must explore the palace. So he commenced, 
with untiring zeal and earnestness, the study of the human 
body. And how did he do this ? Let him answer. 

10. His Principles of Investigation. 
" Whereas the soul has her residence in a place so sublime 
and eminent that we cannot ascend to her and attain to the 
knowledge of her, except by a particular and general investi- 
gation of the lower and accessible things of her kingdom, or 
whereas she lives withdrawn so far within, that she cannot 
be exposed to view until the coverings under which she is 
hidden are unfolded and removed in order, it hence becomes 
necessary that we ascend to her by the same steps or degrees, 
and the same ladder, by which her nature, in the formation of 
the things of her kingdom, descends into her body. By way, 
therefore, of an Introduction to Rational Psychology, I will 
premise the Doctrine of Series and Degrees, the design 
of which is to teach the nature of Order and its rules, as ob- 
served and prescribed in the succession of things; for the 
rational mind, in its analytical inquiry into causes from effects, 
nowhere discovers them, except in the Subordination of things 
and the Co-ordination of subordinates ; wherefore, if we would 
advance from the sphere of effects to that of causes, we must 



HIS CALL AND PREPARATION. 129 

proceed by Orders and Degrees, agreeably to what rational 
analysis itself both approves and advises." E. A. K. I. 579. 
" By the Doctrine of series and degrees, when taken in con- 
junction with experience, we are led into the inmost knowledge 
of natural things." 628. 

Such were his principles of investigation. We see that 
they were worthy of his antecedent character, were, indeed, a 
natural and necessary outgrowth from it. No one familiar with 
his previous works could help coming to this conclusion. The 
discovery and announcement of these principles were the cul- 
minating point of his growth thus far, and were as necessary a 
rundle in the ladder by which he was climbing up to high 
spiritual things as any other step in his progress had been. 
And it was so till the last. There was perfect unity in his 
progress from first to last. The posterior was the outgrowth 
of the prior, just as is the case with the plant or the animal, — 
that is to say, there was no capacity, no quality of mind, no 
discovery grafted on to what he had already become by de- 
velopment, as you graft the scion of one tree upon another. 
There was nothing in his whole character but what was con- 
gruous, nothing successively developed but what was related 
to everything going before, as an effect to its cause. This 
grand doctrine of series and degrees, which, in a somewhat 
modified form, plays so important a part in all his future 
spiritual, as it had in his scientific, writings, was no super- 
added, arbitrary gift from the Divine, but was as much his dis- 
covery, or the result of a revelation to him because of the 
natural and continued action of his peculiar faculties, as is the 
apple-blossom the result of the opening bud of the apple-tree. 

Being now earnestly in pursuit of a knowledge of the soul, 
Swedenborg naturally took what he supposed to be the nearest 
and most direct course to her. The blood, in its several de- 
grees, including the animal spirits, or spirituous fluid, with its 
vessels and the heart, became the first object of his investi- 
gations ; then followed his " Introduction to Rational Psy- 
7 



130 SWEDENBORQ AND THE NEW AGE. 

chology," in which he emphasizes the importance of his great 
Doctrine of Series and Degrees ; and after this a wonderful 
treatise on the brain, the soul's highest natural tabernacle. 
After this, having entered, as he supposed, the very vestibule 
of the object of his search, he had nothing to do but to open 
the door to her inmost recess ; but she still eluded his grasp. 
But his hopes were only deferred, not destroyed ; he only 
discovered that there must be some modification in his modes 
of search. Providence was leading him, not arbitrarily di- 
recting him, but leading him in the only way in which it was 
possible to lead him, — namely, through his own experiences. 

11. Changes his Plan. 

He has now arrived at another important stage of his in- 
vestigations. He finds it necessary to change his course some- 
what in his search for the soul. What he says, both in retro- 
spect and in prospect, is exceedingly interesting. He had 
published the " Economy of the Animal Kingdom," treating 
of the vital fluids of the body, the heart, and its appendages of 
arteries and veins, and the brain. But " before traversing the 
whole field in detail," he says, " I made a rapid passage to the 
soul, and put forth a prodromus respecting it. But, on con- 
sidering the matter more deeply, I found that I had directed 
my course thither both too hastily and too fast. . . . But as 
the soul acts in the supreme or innermost things, and does not 
come forth until all her swathings have been successively un- 
folded, I am, therefore, determined to allow myself no respite 
until I have run through the whole field to the very goal, — 
until I have traversed the universal animal kingdom to the 
soul. Thus I hope that, by bending my course inwards con- 
tinually, I shall open all the doors leading to her, and at length 
contemplate the soul itself, by the Divine permission. 

" To accomplish this grand end I enter the circus, designing 
to consider and examine thoroughly the whole world or micro- 
cosm which the soul inhabits ; for I think it is in vain to seek 



BIS CALL AND PREPARATION. 131 

her anywhere but in her own kingdom. . . . The body is her 
image, resemblance, and type ; she is the mode, the idea, the 
head, — that is, the soul of the body, — thus she is represented in 
the body as in a mirror. I am, therefore, resolved to examine 
carefully the whole anatomy of her body, from the heel to the 
head, and from part to part. . . . But, since it is impossible to 
climb or leap from the organic, physical, and material world 
— I mean the body — immediately to the soul, ... it has been 
necessary to lay down new ways by which I might be led to her, 
and thus gain access to her palace, — namely, to discover, dis- 
engage, and bring forth, by the most intense application and 
study, certain new doctrines for my guidance, which are (as 
my plan shows) the doctrines of forms, of order and degrees, 
of series and society, of communication and influx, of correspond- 
ence and representation, and of modification. 

" Let us then," he says in the closing paragraph of the 
Prologue to the " Animal Kingdom," from which the above ex- 
tracts are made, " gird up our loins for the work. Experience 
is at our side with a full horn of plenty. The nine virgins are 
present also, adorned with the riches of nearly two thousand 
years, — I mean all the sciences, — by whose abundance, powers, 
and patronage the work is constructed. . . . All things at the 
present day stand provided and prepared, and await the light. 
The ship is in the harbor ; the sails are swelling ; the east wind 
blows : let us weigh anchor and put forth to sea." 

A knowledge of the soul, he says, will constitute the crown 
of his studies. Of the indispensable qualifications for a clear 
perception of truth, he reiterates, among others, " the love of 
truth for truth's sake, or for the sake of the common good." 
This was indeed the real illuminator, — or the occasion of it — 
of his pathway to the goal which he so earnestly sought. 

To understand Swedenborg's present state of progress 
towards a final preparation for his great crowning mission, — as 
yet unknown even to himself, — we need to be familiar with 
those grand treatises, the " Economy of the Animal Kingdom" 



132 SWEDENBORO AND THE NEW AGE. 

and the " Animal Kingdom." No one can read and understand 
a single paragraph from either of these wonderfully original and 
profound works, especially the latter, — his last great work before 
the opening of his spiritual vision, — without being astonished as 
well at the novelty as at the depth and breadth of his thoughts. 
One of the results of his investigations is most especially in- 
teresting in this connection, as showing that his next transition 
phase of life, or of use, was not a sudden leap, as from darkness 
into light, or from ignorance on a certain subject to glowing 
intelligence upon it, but that all his knowledge, all his progress 
— every step of it — in intelligence and wisdom and heavenly 
light, was the result of experience, of earnest, devoted, plodding 
industry, and just as much so in the latter part as in the earlier 
part of his life. No one who will study his life, as revealed in 
his works from beginning to end, in the order in which they 
came from his hand, can fail to be convinced of this. In the 
main, one was the spontaneous outgrowth of another all along 
till his death. It was one continuous growth, one continuous 
succession of buildings up, the higher upon the lower, to the 
cap-stone, in perfect and undeviating symmetry. There was no 
break, no gap, no " fault" (as the geologists say) in Sweden- 
borg's progress, or in his character. He was all along, and 
from step to step, a complete, whole man, a sound man. 

12. Correspondence and Representation. 

We all acknowledge that Swedenborg's great, peculiar mis- 
sion was to open the Word, to explain Sacred Scripture, and 
to do so by a knowledge of the great law according to which 
it was written, — namely, the Science of Correspondences. How 
did he gain this knowledge ? Was it an arbitrary revelation 
to him ? Or did he receive it in the order of logical thought, 
inquiry, and investigation, as he had received all his knowl- 
edge ? That is, did it come to him little by little, as a revela- 
tion from the Divine to honest, loving, persevering thought, 
just as all of what is called original knowledge comes? Pre- 



HIS CALL AND PREPARATION. 133 

cisely so, as is abundantly proved by bis writings. Like all 
other revelations from the Lord, this peculiar kind had its 
seed-time, its germinating state, and then its progressive de- 
velopment till the consummation of its full and effective fruit- 
bearing maturity. 

It will be remembered that the Doctrine of Correspondence 
and Representation was one of his " new doctrines" announced 
in the Prologue to the "Animal Kingdom" as one of the sub- 
jects of investigation in his new chase after the soul. It is 
very plain, from what he says of correspondence and represen- 
tation in various places in the " Animal Kingdom," that a knowl- 
edge of this subject did not drop down, already acquired, from 
God, out of heaven, into his mind, any more than any other kind 
of knowledge did. In the first volume of the " Animal King- 
dom" he speaks of " a perpetual symbolical representation of 
spiritual life in corporeal life, and likewise of a perpetual typical 
representation of the soul in the body," and adds the following 
very significant note, significant as foretokening that use of such 
knowledge, of which, though so near at hand, he had as yet 
had scarcely a premonition : 

" In our Doctrine of Representations and Correspondences 
we shall treat of both these symbolical and typical representa- 
tions, and of the astonishing things which occur, I will not 
say of the living body only, but throughout nature, and which 
correspond so entirely to supreme and spiritual things that 
one would swear that the physical world was purely symbolical 
of the spiritual world, insomuch that, if we choose to express 
any natural truth in physical and definite vocal terms, and to 
convert these terms only into the corresponding spiritual 
terms, we shall by this means elicit a spiritual truth or theolog- 
ical dogma, in place of the physical truth or precept, although 
no mortal would have predicted that anything of the kind 
could possibly arise by bare literal transposition, inasmuch as 
the one precept, considered separately from the other, appears 
to have absolutely no relation to it." He further adds : " I 



134 SWEDENBORG AND THE NEW AGE. 

intend hereafter to communicate a number of examples of 
such correspondence, together with a vocabulary containing 
the terms of spiritual things, as well as of the physical things 
for which they are to be substituted. This symbolism per- 
vades the living body, and I have chosen simply to indicate it 
here for the purpose of pointing out the spiritual meaning of 
searching the reins. 1 ' He was still only a scientist and philos- 
opher. 

13. -ZZV-s State Ripening. 

We may now have glimpses of the vast significance of Swe- 
denborg 1 s whole previous life. We see, as we draw near to 
the grand consummation, how he has been preparing, in the 
order of his nature as a man, according to his peculiar tastes 
and capabilities, as a tree to bear fruit, and as a tree to bear 
fruit of its own peculiar form, size, color, and flavor. If we 
could examine the tree in its germinal beginning, and in all the 
successive phases of its development, we should see every 
quality of the fruit foretokened in everv fibre and in every par- 
ticle of fluid belonging to every phase of development of the 
tree. So of Swedenborg. His present state of knowledge and 
experience, and developed capacities and intuition, is simply a 
fulfilment of his whole life, and everything in it, as a prophecy, 
is simply the ripening fruit, of which every thought, and every 
phase of every thought, was a prediction. And just so sure as 
the tree is the bearer of its own fruit, is he the author, and the 
only responsible author, of his own work, and of every part of 
it. But he can see — as the tree cannot, and as the unre- 
generate man cannot — that he, like everybody, in fact, every- 
thing, else, is but the servant or instrument of the Lord ; and 
he loves to achioicledge this. 

It is plain that what Swedenborg has thus far learned of 
correspondence (remember this was before his illumination) 
has come as the result of his study of nature, and of his pecu- 
liar modes of search after the soul. By this study and these 
modes he was, as it were, spontaneously led to a knowledge of 



HIS CALL AND PREPARATION. 135 

the relation of natural things as effects, to spiritual principles 
as causes, which relation is what is meant by correspondence. 
And such knowledge, so far as knowledge is concerned, is the 
consummation of the last, and the foundation and beginning 
of his next, phase of life, — it is the fruit of the tree not yet 
ripe, but beautiful in promise ; it needs a yet wanner, brighter 
radiance from heaven to bring it to maturity. 

14. Another Transition. 

Up to this next transition state — namely, that from the com- 
pletion of his course as a scientist and philosopher to that of 
his " call to a more holy office" — all are agreed that he was, in 
the true sense of the word, his own master, though always, 
like all other men, a servant of the Lord, and that his works 
were the legitimate fruits of his own free thought, and unaided 
but by that influx from the Lord which is equally a gift to all 
men. But it is impossible for any one who has not followed 
him in his wonderful development of rational and illuminated 
thought, by a systematic study of his works, to form any ade- 
quate conception of the huge proportions of the man as he at 
this stage of his life stands before us. He is immeasurable, 
by any known standard, in almost every attribute of his nature. 
His regeneration, which has been gradually ripening into 
" love of truth from good," has spread a halo of light around 
every faculty. Because of his highly regenerated state, his 
mind is already basking in the very light itself of heaven, — he 
is high up on the acclivity of the mountain, above the clouds 
of earth, and with his eyes still turned upward. Already is 
he advancing into a state of " revelation from perception," or 
of "internal inspiration," which is equally the gift of all re- 
generated men and angels. 

Now here are two things whose significance we want to 
understand : the first is the fact that the sunshine of heaven 
is actually streaming down into his mind, and evidently from a 
high altitude. It is more than day-dawn, — that took place in 



136 SWEDENBORG AND THE NEW AGE. 

the early part of his manhood, all his works bear witness to 
it. But it was now evidently more than the light of earliest 
day in which he was directly searching for the soul. His last 
great work— the "Animal Kingdom"— shows an advanced 
state of even spiritual illumination ; every paragraph of his 
" analysis' is radiant with light. 

The other thing is the fact of his wonderfully developed 
capacities and his vast learning. His capacities are as a rich 
soil, and his stores of knowledge as the seeds of every variety 
of good food planted in it. 

What do we expect on earth from such a relation of things, 
—namely, the summer sunshine flowing down into the planted 
and cultivated field of fertile soil ? And that such a mind 
as Swedenborg's was as such a field is plain from his own 
words : 

" Man can form and retain no idea, notion, or conception of 
interior truths except from scientifics ; but scientific truths are 
founded upon sensual truths, for without sensual truths scien- 
tific truths cannot be comprehended. These different kinds of 
truths succeed each other in order. Man cannot be confirmed 
in interior truths or doctrinals except by ideas derived from 
things sensual and scientific ; for nothing is ever given with 
man in his thought— even as to the deepest arcanum of faith 
—which has not with it a natural and sensual idea." A C 
3310. 

Again: "Scientifics must be arranged into order in the 
natural before the arrangement of the truths of the church, 
because the latter are to be apprehended by the former ; for 
nothing can enter the understanding of man without ideas 
acquired from such scientifics as man has procured to himself 
from infancy. Man is altogether ignorant that every truth of 
the church which is called a truth of faith is founded upon his 
scientifics, and that he apprehends it and keeps it in the mem- 
ory, and calls it forth from the memory, by ideas wrought from 
the scientifics with him." 5510. 



HIS CALL AND PREPARATION. 137 

This is most remarkable, and is full of suggestion. It shows 
the importance of the high cultivation of the external mind 
and the acquisition of scientifics, by which are meant all 
kinds of knowledge acquired by all kinds of experiences of 
the external mind. But how full of significance when we 
apply all this to Swedenborg's case ! "What a harvest is in 
him in prophecy ! But the hind of harvest, so unlike any- 
thing hitherto of earth, who can tell ? Its peculiar promise 
is in the peculiar soil, the ground, stored with such varied 
and wonderful experiences and potencies. And it is of such a 
nature that it cannot remain fallow, it must bring forth ; for 
the fact that Swedenborg was " in good, and in truth from 
good," opened his mind, as a field, upward to the very light of 
heaven. The Lord was in that light, was, indeed, the light 
itself. Can too much be expected from such a relation of 
things ? 

15. Ripened for Nobler Work. 

Thus far all agree that Swedenborg became what he was by 
following the leadings of Providence, and by thus cultivating 
and developing his native capacities. Nothing was added to, 
engrafted upon, or "instilled" into him. There was nothing 
in him but what was of him and belonged to him, and by his 
own acquisition and appropriation, as much as the fruit belongs 
to the tree on which it grows. Thus far he has been growing 
and ripening in the order of life. And who can read his later 
philosophical works, especially his " Animal Kingdom," without 
being convinced that he was, in the highest and truest sense of 
the word, a man, an exceptional man ; that he was as a fully- 
developed tree prepared for the production of seme unknown 
and extraordinary fruit ? Who can read the full significance, 
who can interpret, indeed, the wonderful prophecies, of such a 
combination of human virtues and capacities without looking 
for results such as had never been the fruit of human intellect 
before? A mind so vast, so cultivated, so filled, and filled 
with such varied and exalted stores, and so regenerated into 
7* 



138 SWEDENBORG AND THE NEW AGE. 

the very light of heaven, and thus so completely one with the 
Lord, so perfectly obedient to every impulse of inflowing life 
and light from Him : who can think of such a mind, of such 
a full man, and then conceive of any necessity for any change 
of his relation to the Lord, for the sake of the work which he 
had to do, any change other than as that of the continued 
perfection of the blade for the sake of the corn ? And this is 
precisely the relation of all Swedenborg's works to himself, 
theological as well as scientific : they are as the corn to the 
blade, or the fruit to the tree. They must be so, or he has 
taught us a false philosophy. What was now the inevitable and 
unmistakable prophecy of Swedenborg's whole being, and his 
relation to the Lord, but, if we could read it truly, exactly 
what his theological writings fulfilled. We can conceive of 
the sun's having greater power over the fruit as it ripens, thus 
of its making it sweeter or more like itself; but we cannot 
conceive of its changing, in any sense, or manner, or degree, 
its relation to the fruit, or of its making the fruit depend less 
upon the producing-tree for whatever is peculiar in its form 
and quality. Swedenborg was now advanced to a highly ma- 
ture state, and therefore was prepared to bear riper and sweeter 
fruit. As a branch he had become more perfectly recipient of 
what flowed into him from the Vine. And this did not make 
him less himself, or his works less his own, but more in unison 
with the Divine, from which all regenerated men and angels 
delight to act. 

This was precisely the manhood that was now needed to be 
the medium of instruction from the Lord for the coming man- 
hood of the New Jerusalem, — it was an exemplar and a pre- 
cursor, a John the Baptist, — for the coming manhood of the 
New Jerusalem is to be distinctively, like his, a free and 
rational one, and in this respect differing from any preceding 
manhood. This was the grandest and noblest finite manhood 
that has ever existed, and it was the medium of the grandest 
and noblest mission to mankind. And every attribute of 



HIS CALL AND PREPARATION. 139 

Swedenborg's manhood entered into his mission ; not one of 
his faculties was suppressed ; and every one was filled with 
light and life from the Lord ; every one was a tabernacle of 
the Lord, as the branch is of life from the vine. The coming 
man is to feed on rational truth such as had never been 
revealed before ; its verbal statement must come from the 
Lord, therefore, through an intensely rational mind, for no 
other mind could adequately measure it down to the wants of 
such rational mind. And Swedenborg was now to do a work, 
not which would detract from, or in any sense or manner limit, 
his responsible manhood, or make him less a man, but which 
would help to carry him on to still higher and nobler manhood, 
and thus continue to make him a still more and more perfect 
servant of the Lord. 

16. His Intromission. 
But Swedenborg's new work, on account of its peculiar 
nature, required new and extraordinary qualifications, which 
could be acquired only by extraordinary means. I refer to 
his intromission into the spiritual world. This was extraor- 
dinary because of his extraordinary state of reception. By 
his faithful obedience to the laws of human life, Swedenborg 
had as naturally and as spontaneously grown up into the light 
of heaven as a plant grows up into its flowering state. His 
illustration, or internal inspiration, was as naturally and inevi- 
tably the result of such growth as the opening of the flower 
is of such state of the plant. So also was his spiritual vision, 
or open and conscious presence with spirits and angels in the 
other life. Not that all men in a corresponding state of regen- 
eration have this gift, though they have that of internal in- 
spiration or illustration, yet this even with a difference, accord- 
ing to mental genius and endowment. Swedenborg's spiritual 
vision was as much the necessary and spontaneous result of his 
peculiar character of mind as was all that was peculiar or 
exceptional in his scientific attainments or in his illumination. 



140 SWEDENBORG AND THE NEW AGE. 

Open intercourse with angels was an extraordinary gift, but no 
more so, perhaps, than some of his other gifts. He belonged 
to a peculiar province of the Grand Man, so does every 
man. He simply had the endowments characteristic of the 
province to which he belonged, just as the eye, the ear, the 
hand, or the foot has its peculiar function because of its form 
and its relation to other parts of the body. Some people are 
spontaneously clairvoyant, and do not understand why all are 
not so ; whilst others cannot possibly conceive of anything above 
nature, and are, therefore, inevitably skeptical about another 
or spiritual state of existence. All are more really in the spirit- 
ual world than in the natural world, for all are, in their real 
nature, spiritual beings, the body being only a temporary tene- 
ment and instrument to give us conscious and effective being 
in this world. When men were in the order of life, visions 
were frequent. They are not contrary to true human nature, 
but one of its birthrights, but now lost because of abuse. It 
required no interference with the laws of life for Swedenborg 
to receive this gift. It only required that he should be of a 
certain genius, and in a certain state, just as for one of the 
many organs of the body to see, rather than hear or taste or 
touch, it must have a certain form and structure, and then it 
sees as naturally and spontaneously as another organ hears, — it 
cannot help doing so. And such was Swedenborg's case as to 
spiritual vision : it as much belonged to the man, as he then 
teas, as any other gift did. 

17. His Intromission Progressive. 

Swedenborg's intromission was gradual, just as his illumina- 
tion was, just as the development of every one of his faculties 
was, thus was not an arbitrary gift by the Lord, instantane- 
ously conferred upon him by simply opening his spiritual eyes. 
His spiritual sight was opened when he was ripe for it, like 
the flower from the bud, and as the result of development of 
what was inherent in his very nature, and thus because that 



HIS CALL AND PREPARATION. 141 

was, in his case, the next orderly and inevitable step in the 
process of growth. There had not been, and there was not 
then, any sudden transition in his state, as to illustration (which 
is an entirely different thing from spiritual vision), as if by 
some extraordinary bestowment by Divine Providence. He 
first had " illustration of the natural mind" as is evident from 
the wonderful character of his later philosophical works. And 
such illustration, he says, " does not ascend by discrete degrees, 
but it increases in a continuous degree ; and in proportion as it 
increases there is illustration from the interior by the light of 
the two superior degrees. The natural mind may, therefore, 
be elevated into the light of heaven, in which the angels are, 
and may perceive naturally, and thus not so fully, what the 
angels perceive spiritually ; but, nevertheless, the natural mind 
of man cannot be elevated into the very light of the angels." 
(Note this.) " When man's natural mind is raised into the 
light of heaven he can think, and even speak, with the angels ; 
but then the thought and speech of the angels flow into the 
natural thought and speech of the man, and not the reverse ; 
on which account the angels speak with man in natural lan- 
guage, thus in his mother-tongue. This takes place by a 
spiritual influx into the natural, and not by any natural influx 
into the spiritual. Human wisdom, therefore, which is nat- 
ural as long as a man lives in the natural world, cannot, on 
any consideration, be raised into angelic wisdom, but only into 
a certain image of it." D. L. W. 256, 257. 

And this is the difference between Swedenborg's state and 
that of the men of the Golden Age, who also conversed with 
angels. They were not " in any other than natural light," or 
the light of the natural mind. He was also in spiritual light, 
he was " among the angels like one of them," and consequently 
imbibed truths in the very light itself of heaven, and thus 
immediately from the Lord, who is that light. There was 
with him a certain kind of separation from his body, as to his 
intellectual part, which enabled him to be with the angels as 



142 SWEDENBORG AND THE NEW AGE. 

one of them, and to partake of their wisdom ; and this was the 
combined result of his state, as to regeneration, and of his 
spiritual visions. This enabled htm, — different from other re- 
generated men, — even while in the body, to be " illuminated 
by the light of the Word more proximately." It was this 
that enabled him first to perceive the internal sense of the 
Word, and then to formulate it in his own understanding and 
explain it to others. In fact, being then regenerated up into 
the higher degrees of his nature, and also having " spiritual 
sight," he was in the very light itself, the very " spirit of life 
itself," of the Word, which is the spiritual sense in its own 
substantial form ; for he says, " if you are willing to believe it, 
man's internal man is in the internal sense of its own accord, 
for it is a heaven in the least form, and it is with the angels 
of heaven when it is open." A. C. 10,400. This does not, of 
course, mean that the " internal man" is in the " internal 
sense," in the verbalized form of the internal sense, as contained 
in Swedenborg's writings, but in its form as " living light;" for, 
as we intend to show, there is an infinite difference between 
the internal sense, as finited, formulated, and expressed in 
human language, and the internal sense, as the very spirit and 
life of the Word. 

In view of this fact — namely, such complete, conscious life 
of a man, while on earth, with the angels of heaven, as was 
the case with Swedenborg — we are overwhelmed in wonder and 
amazement. But let us not lose our senses. There never was 
an effect without a cause, and that cause, however extraordinary 
and seemingly miraculous the effect, something else than God's 
deviation, in any sense or manner whatever, from His own 
eternally unchangeable laws or mode of operation. True, 
Swedenborg says that, " since the creation" it had not been 
granted to any one, as it was to him, " to be at the same time 
in natural light and in spiritual light, . . . and thereby to see 
the wonderful things of heaven, to be among the angels like 
one of them, and at the same time to imbibe truths in lurht, 



BIS CALL AND PREPARATION. 143 

and thus to perceive and teach them, and consequently to be 
led by the Lord." But Swedenborg does not say that no one 
in the future " will ever come into a like state, even as no one 
before him had ever been in such a state," as is sometimes 
illogically inferred. This would be saying that the Lord had 
deviated from His one only law of influx, or had added some- 
thing to its operation, in order to make a prodigy of Sweden- 
borg, which all partakers of the true philosophy of developing 
humanity, as taught in Swedenborg's writings, will most em- 
phatically deny ; for all must see and acknowledge that the 
Divine Influx, so far as God is concerned, is the same to all 
and at all times, and that any difference in results, therefore, 
must be owing to difference in recipient conditions. The fact 
is, Swedenborg was the inauguration, or an exemplification of 
the inauguration, of a new and extraordinary phase of develop- 
ing humanity, a phase as different from every preceding one 
as youthhood is from childhood, or manhood from youthhood. 
Humanity had never before been capable of what Swedenborg 
was, or of what humanity is to be, capable. Swedenborg lived 
in the transition age from the old to the new, but was of the 
new. There are recipient conditions in youthhood that do not 
exist in childhood, and in manhood that do not exist in youth- 
hood, also in spiritual manhood that do not exist in natural 
manhood. What if Swedenborg lived in the dawning spiritual 
manhood of the race : how different would be the recipient 
conditions furnished by his mind for the operation of the Di- 
vine Influx from any existing before ! Swedenborg was most 
plainly a grand exemplar of a new kind or new degree of man- 
hood. There existed in him the new conditions, and there- 
fore he had the new gifts, and gifts that were extraordinary 
only because they were new. Not that all are going to have 
the same gifts that he had, or do the same work. There will 
be all the difference in the individuals of the new manhood 
that there had been in those of the old. Some will be high 
and some low, some internal and some external, in the differ- 



144 SWEDENBORG AND THE NEW AGE. 

ent provinces of the Grand Man of the coming humanity, as 
in the past. The Lord will make out of all, precisely as He 
did out of Swedenborg, all that the recipient conditions of their 
mind will admit of. And the coming man, as he becomes re- 
generate, will, like Swedenborg, delight to be led by the Lord, 
and to acknowledge that all good is from Him, and that he is 
only the Lord's servant. 

18. Importance of his Intromission. 

But, to return to the fact of Swedenborg's intromission, we 
may see what an important factor it was in his preparation 
for his work from the following, as quoted by another from 
one of his letters to Dr. Beyer. He says, — 

" When heaven was opened to me it was necessary for me 
first to learn the Hebrew language, as well as the correspond- 
ences, of which the whole Bible is composed, which led me to 
read the Word of God over many times ; and as the Word of 
God is the source whence all theology must be derived, I was 
thereby enabled to receive instruction from the Lord, who is 
the Word." 

It was at this time that Swedenborg became aware of the 
nature of his real mission, and that he, therefore, commenced 
specific preparation for it by the study of Hebrew, and of the 
Word in Hebrew, and of the " science of correspondences," of 
which, as we have seen, he had had glimpses years before. 
He had accpuired certain knowledges on the plane of Nature, 
knowledges of the relations of natural things as effects to 
spiritual principles as causes ; these served as vessels — " ves- 
sels of gold and vessels of silver" — into which he could receive, 
or which rendered him capable of receiving, such indispensable 
spiritual knowledges as were the result of his open intercourse 
with spirits and angels. His intromission enabled him to com- 
plete his knowledge of correspondences, for this enabled him to 
see plainly the causes towards which he had so long been 
climbing up from effects. He was now enabled to see the 



HIS CALL AND PREPARATION. 145 

spiritual sense of the Word, and to learn things about the 
Word which he could not have learned, even though in a state 
of spiritual illumination, from the mere letter. He was now 
enabled also to see the mysteries of the spiritual world, and 
thus the state of man after death. Even this kind of knowl- 
edge was indispensable to a complete, rational understanding of 
the Word in its practical relation to humanity, — that is, to men 
and angels, — and most especially indispensable to a rational ex- 
planation of the Word ; and this was what was now specifically 
needed, — namely, a rational explanation of the Word. 



CHAPTER VI. 

THE WRITINGS AND THE SPIRITUAL SENSE. 
1. The Writings. 

And now we come to the question, What is the real nature 
of Swedenborg's writings ? What do they do ? or what does 
Swedenborg profess to do ? In the very significant words of 
another : 

" We must allow the Writings of the Church to explain 
themselves, and then we shall never find any contradictions 
therein." 

Now, the Writings seem to teach some of their readers that 
they are " the Lord's writings ;" that they are the " spiritual 
sense of the Word ;" that they are the " Word without the 
external sense ;" and that they are the " Lord's Advent," and 
are the " Holy City, New Jerusalem." 

We grant that there are expressions in Swedenborg's writ- 
ings that seem to justify these conclusions. But the spirit and 
philosophy of his teachings, or the obvious import of his teach- 
ings as a whole, lead to no such conclusions. 

Let us now consider these four propositions, namely, that 
the Writings are the " Lord's writings ;" that they are the 
" spiritual sense of the Word ;" that they are the " Advent of 
the Lord ;" and that they are the " Holy City, New Jeru- 
salem." 

First, "the Lord's writings." Much has been made of 
the following, found in a photo-lithographic edition of Sweden- 
borg's MSS., vol. viii. p. 1 : " Those books are to be enumer- 
ated which were written hy the Lord through me (a Domino 
per me) from the beginning to the present day." 
146 



THE WRITINGS AND THE SPIRITUAL SENSE. 147 

Every student of Swedenborg's Latin knows that a Domino 
per me does not necessarily mean by the Lord through me, but 
more likely from the Lord by me. The latter meaning is cer- 
tainly more in accord with other expressions which he uses in 
regard to his and the Lord's relation to his Writings. lie no- 
where says that he writes from himself or from " the devil," 
but always from the Lord. How could a regenerating man 
express himself differently? But even admitting that the 
above translation of the phrase is the correct one, we must in- 
terpret its meaning in the light of Swedenborg's teachings 
about man and God and man's relation to God. True, Swe- 
denborg had " internal inspiration ;" but his Writings say that 
" inspiration is not dictation, but influx." And we all know 
that the Divine Influx is not influx of words or of ideas, or of 
principles even, but of truth, and of truth as " living light." 
Nothing but truth as the " spirit of truth" comes by influx. 
Swedenborg's writings, therefore, are the Lord's writings so far, 
and only so far, as finite mind was capable of receiving the 
spirit of truth and Divinely, or by correspondence, formu- 
lating it into statements of truth. The formulation was a 
finiting process ; it must, therefore, necessarily take place in a 
finite recipient vessel ; and unless the vessel were in a perfectly 
passive state, it must partake more or less of the quality of the 
vessel. Swedenborg's writings can be the Lord's writings, 
therefore, only in the sense in which the works of an agent 
acting according to as perfect an understanding of his prin- 
cipal's wishes as he is capable of are the principal's works. 
All that we are and all that we have, and all our ability to do, 
come from the Divine Influx. A regenerating man is livingly 
sensible of this, and he is constantly acknowledging it. If he 
does good, it is not he that does it, but the Lord through him. 
Thus Swedenborg nowhere 'takes any credit to himself for 
the wonderful revelations he is making to mankind. It is the 
Lord's doing's. It was the Lord that " instructed" him, and 
"taught" him, and "dictated to" him. He was like the 



148 SWEDENBORG AND THE NEW AGE. 

angels in this respect. They never do any good of them- 
selves ; it is always the Lord acting in thein and through them 
as humble instruments. This is plainly all that Swedenborg 
means in what he says about the Lord's relation to his works. 
How frail a basis — the perfectly natural and spontaneous ex- 
pressions of loyalty of a regenerated man to the Source of all 
good — on which to found the perfectly astounding claim that 
all of Swedenborg's theological writings, including even the 
" Spiritual Diary," are the Lord's writings! 

2. The Spiritual Sense. 

Some say " That the Writings are the spiritual sense of the 
Word," and thus the " Word itself without the literal sense ;" 
and this is just what they necessarily must be if they are the 
" Lord's writings." 

What is meant, then, by the spiritual or internal sense of 
the Word ? All are agreed that it is indeed the essential 
Word of God ; yea, is the Lord Himself. In this we are sup- 
ported by the following passages : 

" The internal sense is the most essential Word." " The in- 
ternal sense is the Word Itself." " In single things there is 
an internal holy, which is its internal sense, or celestial and 
divine sense ; this sense is the soul of the Word, and is Truth 
Divine Itself proceeding from the Lord, thus the Lord Him- 
self." " The spiritual sense lives in the literal sense, as man's 
spirit in his body." A. C. 3432, 9349, 5457, 1540. 

Thus we are left in no doubt in regard to what the internal 
sense of the Word is in its real or absolute nature. 

Again, in its relative nature, or as it relates to man, the in- 
ternal sense is doctrine, or doctrine is the internal sense. " The 
internal sense is doctrine itself." " The doctrine of charity and 
faith is the internal sense of the Word. . . . The internal 
sense of the Word is the very doctrine of love to the Lord 
and charity towards the neighbor." " The doctrine which 
ought to serve man as a lamp is that which is taught by the 



THE WRITINGS AND THE SPIRITUAL SENSE. 149 

internal sense, and thus it is the internal sense." A. C. 10,400, 
9380, 9 409. 

But we are told that " the doctrines taught by Swedenborg 
are the internal sense of the Word." In what sense are they ? 
This is the question. " In the sense of the genuine doctrines 
of the Church" as understood by some, who seem to regard the 
" spiritual sense" and such doctrine as identically one and the 
same. 

" We see, therefore," says one, " that the genuine doctrines 
of the Church, and hence the doctrines taught by Emanuel 
Swedenborg, . . . are the internal sense of the Word." This 
is equivalent to saying that the Writings of Swedenborg are 
the internal sense of the Word, especially as " they are the 
Lord's works," " the Lord's writings," and hence it is claimed 
that they are " the Word without the external sense." Thus, 
" the genuine doctrines of the Church," Swedenborg' s writings, 
and the internal sense of the Word are identically the same. 

3. Absurd Conclusions. 

Now let us see to what absurd conclusions this leads. First, 
it follows that Swedenborg' s writings — including the " Spiritual 
Diary" — are the "most essential Word Itself ';" are the "inter- 
nal holy'" of the Word; are the "soul of the Word;" are 
" Truth Divine Itself proceeding from the Lord ;" are the Lord 
Himself;" that they " live in the literal sense, as the soul in 
the body." 

Second, Swedenborg's writings, if they are the internal 
sense, are " doctrine itself;" are " the very doctrine of love to 
the Lord and charity towards the neighbor ;" are " the doctrine 
that ought to serve man as a lamp." And are they such doc- 
trine? Perhaps doctrine has a deeper meaning than we had 
fathomed. It certainly has, if we had not regarded it as the 
very Word itself in "its spirit and life." Genuine doctrine, 
in its real essence as the internal sense of the Word, is that 
which actually shines in heaven as light ; is that which actually 



150 SWEDENBORG AND THE NEW AGE. 

illuminates the mind ; is that, therefore, which instructs man, 
which instructed Swedenborg, but by its illuminating, not by 
its verbal power. " By genuine doctrine of the Church, as to 
faith and as to life, the internal sense is inscribed both on 
man's understanding and on his will, on his understanding by 
faith and on his will by life." A. C. 9430. Do Swedenborg's 
writings shine ? Can they illuminate the mind ? Do they by 
any process become " inscribed on the understanding and on 
the will" ? 

4. Only Explanations. 

No, most conclusively. Swedenborg's writings are not the 
Word ; are not the Lord ; are not the internal sense of the 
Word; are not genuine doctrine, — i.e., are not "truths con- 
tinuous from the Lord." No, infinitely far from it. What 
are they, then ? They are just what he claims them to be, 
and just what all must, sooner or later, acknowledge them to 
be, — namely, Tbey are simply an " explanation of the inter- 
nal sense," or, rather, an explanation of the real nature of the 
literal sense of the Word, so as to show, so far as human lan- 
guage can show, somewhat of the real character of its " soul" 
of its " spirit and life" within. Swedenborg's writings are not 
to the spiritual sense even, as the body to the soul within the 
body ; not even as the cup to the wine contained in the cup, or 
as the casket to the jewels. This is the relation of Sacred 
Scripture to the spiritual sense. Swedenborg's writings arc- 
nothing more than as verbal expressions about the soul in the 
body, the wine in the cup, or the jewels in the casket; but 
verbal expressions of such a character as to give most precious 
insight into the real nature of Sacred Scripture and its inter- 
nal sense. Swedenborg's writings in no sense or manner 
measure out for us the internal sense, or a single ray of it. 
They do not, and they could not describe even the smallest 
portion of what is contained in a single sentence of Sacred 
Scripture. " In the internal sense are singulars, myriads of 
which make one particular in the literal sense." 'A. C. 3438. 



THE WRITINGS AND THE SPIRITUAL SENSE. 151 

There are a great many passages in Swedenborg of similar 
import. The internal sense of the Word can, indeed, no more 
be put into human language than the sunlight can, or than the 
life of the soul can. The spiritual sense is utterly ineffable. It 
can flow into the mind, and it actually illuminates the regener- 
ated mind, but it cannot flow into words. Hence there is an 
infinite difference between that sense and any possible verbal 
statement of it. 

How, then, is it possible for any one to claim that Sweden- 
borg's words are the Lord's words, and thus that his Writings are 
the Lord's writings, thus Holy Writings, or Sacred Scriptures ? 
And such they certainly would be if they were the Lord's 
writings ; they would be Sacred Scriptures, and, as such, would 
themselves have an internal sense, thus would themselves be 
God, as the Sacred Scriptures are, in their " Spirit and Life." 
God is Life ; and Life cannot act or operate otherwise than by 
correspondence ; for all life — finite life even — operates by cor- 
respondence ; that is to say, operates in such a way that, what- 
ever is produced from it, is produced in successively evolved 
degrees, so that every lower degree corresponds, as an effect to 
a cause, to the higher, and, at length, to the highest degree 
whence it originated. God never does anything by external, 
arbitrary act, as man does. Nothing can come from God but 
by correspondence ; no effect comes from the normal operation 
of any degree of life but by correspondence. Life in the 
germ of the egg, or of the seed even, operates by correspond- 
ence in every phase and degree of its operations. Every- 
thing in the tree and everything in the flower, and then in the 
fruit, corresponds to and is filled with the life that produced it. 
Such producing life fills, has entire possession of, and thus 
perfectly controls and characterizes, everything of the mechan- 
ism of the tree, and also of the flower and the fruit. This is 
the reason why everything in and of these, corresponds. Now 
if the Lord — the Lord as Life, for He operates in no other 
way — thus filled, had entire possession of, and thus perfectly 



152 SWEDENBORG AND THE NEW AGE. 

controlled and characterized everything of the mechanism of 
Swedenborg's mind, then his fruits, as of a tree, his works, his 
Writings are the Lord's Writings, and hence correspond to the 
Lord ; but not otherwise. The idea of his Writings being the 
Lord's writings, and not correspondences, is, when we under- 
stand the nature of God in His operations as Life, a perfectly 
absurd idea, and is unworthy of the real man of the New 
Jerusalem. 

5. What Swedenborg calls his Writings. 

Now let us see what Swedenborg himself says about his 
Writings. He nowhere calls them the Word, the Lord, the 
soul of the Word, or doctrines in the sense of " truths contin- 
uous from the Lord ;" and this is just what the doctrines — the 
'■'genuine doctrines of the Church" are; they are truths con- 
tinuous from the Lord ; and this is just what he says that gen- 
uine doctrines are. They are the internal sense of the Word, 
are Truth Divine, are the very living Light itself, flowing down 
from, thus " continuous from, the Lord ;" just as genuine light 
is light continuous from the sun ; just as genuine life is life 
continuous from the soul. The genuine doctrine of the New 
Church — that is, the doctrine of man arrived at a state of 
rational freedom — is not verbal doctrine, is not an external, 
authoritative statement of truth, — as it was to the' Israelite 
and the man of the first Christian Church, — but is doctrine 
that shines in and illuminates the mind. It was no formulated, 
verbal instruction, but such doctrine, or the Lord as such doc- 
trine, flowing " continuously" into the mind — flowing in as 
Divine spiritual light — that taught Swedenborg, and that is, in 
like manner, to teach the real man of the New Church, as soon 
as he comes into a state to be so taught. Swedenborg's writ- 
ings are only " verbal statements," only " verbal explanations," 
of doctrine, — of the internal sense of the Word. This is all 
they are, and all that he claims that they are. Swedenborg's 
writings are a revelation of Truth, of the doctrine of the New 



THE WRITINGS AND THE SPIRITUAL SENSE. 153 

Church, for unregenerated men, for men, therefore, who could 
not receive genuine doctrine, or Divine Truth " contimvoudy" 
flowing into the mind from the Lord ; Truth must be finited, 
must be verbalized, must be broken up into formulated state- 
ments or explanations of principles. The regenerated man, on 
the contrary, needs no such verbal statements of doctrine ; he 
has outgrown such a form of revelation, or of " accommodated 
truth," and this is just what " revelation" is, it is accommo- 
dated, verbalized truth. The regenerated man receives doc- 
trine by " internal inspiration," — that is, by sensible influx 
continuous from the Lord. This is the way Swedenborg re- 
ceived doctrine, and this is the hind of doctrine he received. 
And this is what is meant by his being " instructed by the 
Lord." He was instructed by the Lord as such doctrine, as 
such continuously inflowing truth. 

But Swedenborg did not reveal such genuine doctrine, such 
continuous truth, for unregenerated men, — and regenerated 
men, as we have seen, did not need it, — he need not reveal it, 
he could not reveal it, — could not reveal it in any other sense 
than that of " explanations" about it. And this is precisely 
the way in which he characterizes his great work, the " Arcana 
Ccelestia;" he says (A. R. 820) : 

" That the spiritual sense of the Word has been revealed, 
this day, may be seen in the ' Arcana Coelestia,' where the two 
books of Moses, Genesis and Exodus, have been explained 
according to that sense ; also in the ' Doctrine of the New 
Jerusalem,' concerning the Sacred Scriptures, Nos. 5-26 ; in 
the little work on ' The White Horse,' from beginning to end, 
and in the passages collected there from the Sacred Scriptures ; 
and, moreover, in the present explanations of the Apoca- 
lypse, where not a single verse can be understood without the 
spiritual sense." 

Again (A. C. 6597) : " That the internal sense is such as it 
has been expounded (expositus), appears from the particulars 
that have been explained (explicata)." 



15-t SWEDEN BORG AND THE NEW AGE. 

Again : in " Apocalypse Revealed," " Every one may see 
that the Apocalypse cannot be explained at all except by 
[from] the Lord alone." 

Again : " This sense" [the celestial, a part of the internal 
sense] " cannot be expounded, because it is the celestial sense 
itself, not even an idea of which can be expressed in human 
language." S. T>. 4671. 

Again : " I can testify how many tbings are contained in 
thought and speech when they are spiritual ; and that they can 
never be expressed." Adv. iv. p. 66. 

It is not necessary to multiply quotations. Every reader of 
Swedenborg knows that he nowbere pretends to give the in- 
ternal sense of the Word, or of any part, phrase, or verbal 
expression of it, in any other sense than that of an explanation, 
or verbal statement of its representative, significative, or sym- 
bolical meaning. His great work on the Apocalypse is entitled 
" Apocalypsis Explicata," which contains a great deal more 
than " Apocalypsis Eevelata," which last word is evidently used 
in the sense of explicata. And his great work is the " Arcana 
Coelestia," detacta, laid open, uncovered, — that is, laid open 
by explanation, certainly in no other way. In which work, as 
in the others on the Word, he takes up, seriatim, words and 
phrases of Scripture, and says they represent, or they signify 
so and so ; or it is treated (agit, or actum est) of such and 
such things. 

6. The Writings and the Word. 

Swedenborg's writings, then, — it is plain as day, — are the 
internal sense of the Word only in the sense of an explanation 
of the internal sense ; and it is equally plain from his own 
teachings that this is all that he claims for them. Hence there 
is an infinite difference between his Writings and the Word 
itself, either in its external or in its internal sense ; all the 
difference that there is between the light that actually shines 
and warms and illuminates the landscape and creates life and 
beauty, and any verbal expression, statement, or explanation 



THE WRITINGS AND THE SPIRITUAL SENSE. 155 

about the light. The internal sense as " the essential Word 
of God," as " the Lord Himself," as the " Spirit of Truth," is 
a fathomless fountain. Swedenborg's writings are not even the 
bucket by which to draw even a single living draught. They 
only show us that the Word, in its spirit and life, is such a 
fountain, and how and why it is so ; and they also show our 
relation to it, and how we may come into a state to drink of 
it. The internal sense is as the radiance continuously flowing 
forth from the sun and filling all space. Swedenborg's writings 
are not even the optical instrument which enables us to see the 
wonders of such radiance. Tbey only explain to us its nature 
and what we must do to come into a state to see its glories. 
Swedenborg's writings are not even related to the internal 
sense, are not even its vessel or casket, as Sacred Scripture is ; 
are not even the settings of the jewels within the casket ; they, 
indeed, bear no organic relation to them whatever, as the Scrip- 
tures do ; they do not even unlock the casket, much less do 
they open it and expose the jewels to our view ; they only give 
us the key and tell us how to use it — how to apply it to the lock. 
This we can do, or learn to do, by cold intellection. To turn 
the key and raise the cover is quite another matter. Sweden- 
borg did this, but for himself alone ; he could not do it for 
another. No man can do it for another. This requires the 
application of " eye-salve," which no one can apply for another. 
For, to really open the casket and see the jewels, is to have 
your eyes opened, which is. the result of those regenerating 
processes which one man can only explain to another, as Swe- 
denborg has to us, and the nature and necessity of which he 
has so clearly shown in his Writings. 

And this one fact — namely, that they are only explanations 
— is enough to show that Swedenborg's writings are not " the 
Lord's writings." The Lord never explains, never does so in 
any other way or sense than through that kind of responsible 
agency of man which makes the explanation the man's ex- 
planation, though from the Divine Influx, thus from the Lord, 



156 SWEDENBORG AND THE NEW AGE. 

operating in him and through him, hut in him and through 
him as a. free agent and one under the free and unbiased ex- 
ercise of his own rationality. And this was the case with 
Swedenborg in all bis Writings. The Lord only ultimates or 
finites truth down into verbal statements or expressions, as the 
soul, as it were, finites itself down into or out into what we 
call the material body ; or as the germ-life of the seed finites 
itself out into woody fibre and bark, and, at length, leaves, 
blossoms, and fruit. There is an organic connection between 
the soul and the body, also between the vegetable soul and its 
body, the evolved plant or tree. So there is, by correspondence, 
a similar connection between the Lord, or, which is the same 
thing, between Divine Truth and its finited verbal expression 
— Sacred Scripture. Sacred Scripture, therefore, is the basis 
and continent of the Word, of Divine Truth, as the body is of 
the soul, or as the tree is of its evolving life, or as the channel 
is of its stream. Swedenborg's writings are no such basis or 
continent ; as mere explanations they could not be. And no 
one claims them to be, no one pretends that they are, finited 
or evolved from the Lord by correspondence ; and yet, as we 
have before shown, icithout correspondence no writings can be 
" the Lord's writings," no words the Lord's words. 



CHAPTER VII. 

THE BOOKS AND THE ADVENT. 

1. Advent Written on the Boohs. 

Another claim, and by no means the least remarkable one, 
is " that the Lord effected His Second Coming once for all 
through Emanuel Swedenborg;" that Swedenborg's writings 
are, in fact, the Lord's Second Coming ! It is said, indeed, 
that " he [Swedenborg] declares expressly that the BOOKS 
THEMSELVES constitute the Lord's coming !" 

This is perfectly marvellous. And what is the authority 
for it ? Why this : Swedenborg says " in his Sketch of a His- 
tory of the New Church" : 

" Upon all my books, in the spiritual world, was written 
The Lord's Advent (Adventns Domini). The same I also in- 
scribed, by command, on two copies in Holland." 

Again : " The Lord's Second Advent takes place by a man, 
before whom He manifested Himself in person, and whom He 
filled with His Spirit, so that he might teach the doctrines of 
the New Church." Now if " this [Second Advent] is meant 
in the Apocalypse by the New Jerusalem descending out of 
heaven," — and it is claimed that it is so " proved by the super- 
scriptions to Nos. 7*79 and 781 in ' True Christian Religion,' 
when read in consecutive order," — then the " Books Themselves 
constitute" the New Jerusalem also ! 

But we fail to find in Swedenborg's writings any " express 
declaration," or anything even akin to any such declaration, 
that either his books, his Writings, or any verbal statement of 
doctrine whatever, constitutes either the Lord's Second Ad- 

157 



158 SWEDENBORG AND THE NEW AGE. 

vent or the New Jerusalem. " The Lord's advent," written 
on Swedenborg's books, no more implies — much less " declares" 
— that those books constitute the Lord's Second Advent than 
the phrase " Authority in the New Church" printed on the 
back of a book, implies that that book is authority in the New 
Church. 

2. Advent a Perception. 

Let us now, in the exercise of that practical common sense and 
reason which are the peculiar prerogative of the man of this age, 
and not as trammelled and blinded by " authority," briefly con- 
sider, in the light of what Swedenborg says on the subject, 
what the Second Coming of the Lord is. We are all agreed 
that, so far as the Lord is concerned, — whatever may have 
been the appearances to the contrary, — all His comings to man 
have been as the Word: first, as the Word as " Spirit and 
Life" or "living truth," "living light" (this was before man 
was contaminated with evil) ; second, as the Word, or Divine 
Truth finitcd into statements of truth, Sacred Scriptures ; 
third, as the Word "made flesh;" fourth, as a revelation of 
the internal sense. It is the last Advent — which is the most 
glorious of all — which Swedenborg's books are said by some 
to constitute. Swedenborg defines this Coming most plainly. 
He shows that it is a higher and more interior, rational per- 
ception than any preceding coming. Read the following from 
A. C. 2513, in connection with the remarkable statement that 
the " Books Themselves constitute the Lord's Coming," 
namely : 

" The Coming of God signifies perception ; for percep- 
tion is nothing else than a Divine advent, or a Divine in- 
flux into the intellectual faculty." And this is just what the 
Coming of the Lord is, as shown in very many places in 
Swedenborg's writings. And there is reason in this. And, 
in this connection, how full of significance the fact, as acknowl- 
edged, I believe, by all Swedenborg's readers, that " The Lord 
made his Second Advent in Swedenborg's intellectual faculty /" 



THE BOOKS AND THE ADVENT. 159 

This was, indeed, the advent of the Lord to Swedenborg as the 
Spirit of Truth. And it was such advent that gave Sweden- 
borg perception, or, which is the same, "internal inspiration." 
And as Swedenborg was a representative man of this age, — the 
age of the Lord's Second Coming, — we have, exemplified in 
him, the great principle of the Lord's Second Coming to all 
men. That is to say, as the Lord came to him so He comes to 
all men. And as were the conditions of such coming in his 
case, such must be the conditions in all cases ; and the condi- 
tions, as we have elsewhere shown, were certain states of mind 
as to regeneration. All men are in a state of perception, or of 
internal inspiration, from Divine Influx, according to their 
state as to regeneration. Such Influx is the conscious or per- 
ceptive influx of the internal sense of the Word, and is, there- 
fore, the Lord's Second Coming ; for His Second Coming is in 
the perceptive glory of the very spirit and life of the Word, 
and is in the form of the Word as Spirit and Life, or as the 
" Spirit of Truth" which He had promised as His Second Ad- 
vent, and not in the form of any writing or any verbal state- 
ment of truth, much less in the form of the " books themselves" 
containing such statements. 

3. The Books only Treatises on the Advent. 

What relation then do Swedenborg's writings really bear 
to the Second Coming? Let me answer in the language of 
another : " Under the influence of this perception" [this per- 
ceptive coming of the Lord to Swedenborg] " Swedenborg 
wrote all those books in and by which the Lord effected His 
Second Coming in this world." I would amend this by saying, 
" all those books which treat of the doctrines of the New 
Church and thus of the Lord's Second Coming;" for this is all 
that can rationally be made of the superscription — " the Lord's 
Advent" — which was written on " all his books in the spiritual 
world." That is a very appropriate general title to his books ; 
for they all relate, directly or indirectly, to the Lord's Advent. 



160 SWEDENBORO AND THE NEW AGE. 

The title of each treatise, in fact, — the "Arcana Coelestia," the 
" Apocalypse Revealed," the " Apocalypse Explained," the 
" True Christian Religion," etc., — is as the title or subject of 
different chapters of a book under the more general title of 
" The Lord's Advent." 

The following from a learned writer on this subject is per- 
fectly marvellous, — namely, " That the Lord's Advent, which 
was first made in Swedenborg's intellectual faculty and which 
imparted to it perception, was continued also into the very boohs 
which he wrote, is proved by the fact that ' on all his books 
in the spiritual world was written the Lord's Advent, and that 
the same he also inscribed on two copies in Holland !" 

Has there not been some misprint in this case? According 
to Swedenborg's own definition of the Lord's Second Advent, 
no language could receive it or even adequately describe it, 
much less could any books contain it or hold it. For such 
Advent is an " influx into" and a " perception by" the " intel- 
lectual faculty." Can there be any such influx into, and per- 
ception by, books, or words, or language of any kind ? The 
Second Advent is entirely different from any previous coming. 
To the Israelites the Lord came, or rather manifested Himself 
in human language, in finited statements of trutb, in what is 
called — because it is the Lord's — Holy Writing, — Sacred Scrip- 
ture. In this case the book or the language, or the verbal 
meaning of the book, was the Lord's coming, — more correctly, 
was His manifestation as the means of His coming. The 
Israelite was not capable of receiving or of understanding any 
other kind of coming. It was, and it necessarily must have 
been, a revelation or manifestation to his external senses. 
To the men of the First Christian Church the Lord came, or 
rather manifested Himself, as the means of His coming, in a 
finite, visible humanity, as the " Word made flesh." This 
was, relatively, an external coming. But even this coming 
could not have been embodied in a book or books. In its real 
nature, even His First Coming was and is a coming of truth 



THE BOOKS AND THE ADVENT. 161 

in the mind, of truth as " light" to show man his " foes," and 
as a " sword" to drive them out. Even this coming was not a 
" perception," nor does it even now result in perception, except 
as the " foes" are actually driven out, and man becomes a re- 
generated man, and thus comes into a " love of truth for 
truth's sake," and then the Second Advent takes place. But 
the Lord's Second Coming is an actual perceptive presence, a 
real, internal manifestation, a consciously illuminating Influx 
of the Lord as the " Spirit of Truth." Nothing but a re- 
generated mind can receive such a manifestation of the Lord. 
And to all such minds the Lord does consciously manifest 
Himself, as abundantly shown in Swedenborg's writings. He 
so manifested Himself to him, which is an evidence of his 
high state of regeneration. There can be no proof, therefore, 
strong enough to show that the Lord's Advent ..." was 
continued also" — after being first made in Swedenborg's in- 
tellectual faculty — " into the very books which he wrote ;" and 
thus that " the books themselves constitute the Lord's Com- 
ing." Much less can the title of a treatise, and whether in- 
scribed by men, angels, or the Lord, be any evidence that the 
treatise or book is the thing itself about which it is written, 
and even though it be admitted that the Lord Himself wrote 
the book. Even if the Lord wrote Swedenborg's books, as 
claimed, they could not constitute the Lord's Second Coming, 
according to Swedenborg's own definition of that coming. 

4. Man as an Instrument. 

But what does Swedenborg mean by what he says about his 
own agency in connection with the Lord's Advent ? It is very 
plain what he means, if we are not so closely tied down to the 
letter as to be blind as to the real spirit of his language. Let 
us recur to the nature and means of prior comings or manifes- 
tations of the Lord. These have all been different, — different 
in their character and different in their means or instruments. 
" The Lord was able to assume the human essence without 
8* 



162 SWEDENBORQ AND THE NEW AGE. 

being born as a man ; and He was seen as a man in the most 
ancient times, and more recently by the prophets." A. C. 1573. 
He appeared to Moses and others through the medium of an- 
gels. It was through both angels and men that He came or 
manifested Himself in the form of Sacred Scripture. He 
afterwards came by means of a personal incarnation. But it 
is important to bear in mind that the assumed " human es- 
sence" in the first case, the mediumistic angels, in the second, 
Sacred Scripture, in the third, and His Incarnation, in the 
fourth, were not what constituted His real coming; but all 
these were for the sake of His real coming, which takes place 
only in the life of man, either internal or external. It was only 
through obedience to instruction or influence, communicated 
as a result of these several manifestations as mediums, that it 
was possible for the Lord to make His coming a real one, or 
anything more than a manifestation. 

Swedenborg doubtless had something like the above in his 
mind, especially the last, — the Lord's being horn as a man as 
the means of His coming, — when he spoke as he did about his 
own agency in what is called the Second Coming. There 
must be in this, as in every previous case, some finite and ac- 
commodating agency. And since the Lord could not manifest 
Himself in person, as previously shown by Swedenborg, " and 
yet He had foretold that He would come and establish [condi- 
turum] a New Church, which is the New Jerusalem, it follows 
that He must do it by means of a man who was able, not only 
to receive the doctrines of this Church with his understand- 
ing, but also to publish them by the press." There must al- 
ways be the means, as a precursor, a John the Baptist, before 
there can be the real thing. The Lord must first come or 
manifest Himself as an earth, before He can come or manifest 
Himself in the higher form of living creatures upon the earth. 
The soul of man must first manifest itself in the form of a 
natural body, before it can really come in the higher form of 
an angelic being. And then such comings always have been, 



THE BOOKS AND THE ADVENT. 1G3 

and, from the very nature of the case, they always must be, 
gradual comings. The tree is a long time in preparing the 
bud, in preparing even the first sign or manifestation of its 
coming, and then even, after the bud is formed, it is only by 
little and little, under the influence of favoring conditions, and 
after many progressive changes, that the tree really comes in 
its ripened fruit, — in an " image and likeness," that is to say, 
of itself. This is so in everything. There is no coming, of 
whatever kind, or in whatever degree, Divine or natural, that 
takes place "once for all," as said by another of the Lord's 
Second Coming " through Emanuel Swedenborg." If the 
Lord's revelation of Himself as Sacred Scripture, or His In- 
carnation, and the consecpaent subjugation of the hells, had 
not resulted in some form of life, either external or internal, 
in obedience to the laws of life, there would have been no real 
coming on the earth in either case. It is in man's reforming 
and regenerating life, as the result of obedience in each case to 
the lessons of the precursory manifestation or revelation, and 
in that alone, that the Lord's real comings take place. Sacred 
Scripture reveals the laws of external life. So far as man 
obeys these laws, as laws of Grod, Grod comes to him, but 
comes as natural truth. Swedenborg's writings explain Sacred 
Scripture, and in doing so reveal the principles of internal, 
spiritual, and heavenly life. Now, so far as man lives accord- 
ing to these principles, he becomes a regenerated man, and the 
Lord's coming is an internal, conscious, illuminating Influx of 
Divine Truth, such as was never experienced before. 

5. The Writings only an Explanation. 

Thus it is plain what Swedenborg means when he says : 
" The Lord's Second Advent takes place by a man," etc. We 
see that it is of such a nature that it could not take place by 
means like those of any former coming. Such means had done 
their work, and had done precisely the work that was needful for 
them to do ; and at each time there were different means, be- 



164 SWEDENBORG AND THE NEW AGE. 

cause there was different work to do ; and there was different 
work to do, because humanity was in a different state. More 
Sacred Scripture, at the time of the Incarnation, would have 
been of no use; and a personal manifestation would not have 
been adapted to the phase of humanity now developing. What 
is now needed, it is plain, is precisely the rational exposition 
or revelation of truth made, by explanation, in Swedenborg's 
writings. For the Lord to ' ; come in His glory," is for Him 
to come pe rceptively in the internal man. And to effect such 
perceptive coming, man needs to be instructed about the inter- 
nal man, and about the means of bringing it into such a state 
that the Lord can come in it. This is precisely what Swe- 
denborg's writings are for and what they do. And thus we 
may see, and see plainly, exactly what and how much is meant 
by the Lord's Second Advent " taking place," or being 
" effected," as the Latin word Jiat is sometimes translated, " by 
a man." This Advent actually took place in Swedenborg. It 
was a matter of personal experience with him. He had the 
perception, — the internal inspiration, — which was an evidence 
of — which, in fact, itself constituted — the Lord's Advent in 
his mind. The actual perception constituted such coming ; for 
the Lord is always actually present in man's internal man, as 
really and necessarily so as the soul is in the body ; and what is 
called the Second Advent is the conscious perception — as a result 
of a change not in the Lord, but in the mind itself — that He 
is there, and the consecpuent illustration or internal inspiration. 
Now, what did Swedenborg do as the result of such coming 
in his own mind ? Did he pour the " Lord's Advent" into his 
Writings? Did such "conscious perception of the Lord's 
presence flow down from his mind, through his pen, on to the 
paper under his hand ? By what other process could such a 
coming have been " continued also into the very books which 
he wrote" ? We can conceive of the Lord's glorifying the 
instrument of His First Advent, but not of His glorifying in- 
organic books, or words even. Will some one please explain 



THE BOOKS AND THE ADVENT. 165 

the process by which such a marvel can take place, as the 
transference — or " continuance," if he prefers — of " percep- 
tion," which " is nothing else than a Divine Advent, or Divine 
Influx into the intellectual faculty," into books ? No, no ; 
this was not what Swedenborg did. On the contrary, in his 
state of reception of the Lord and thus of perception, he 
simply gave those " explanations," made those verbal rev- 
elations of Divine Truths, — made them as far as verbal state- 
ments could make them, — by which, so far as they should be 
heeded and obeyed by men, the Lord could effect His real Sec- 
ond Coming by perception in them, as He had done and was 
doing in Swedenborg. 

Such, then, are Swedenborg's writings in relation to the 
Second Advent : they are that Advent only in the very exter- 
nal sense of teachings about it, and thus of means to it ; in 
like manner as the Incarnation was the First Advent only in 
the sense of a preparation for it and as an instrument of- it. 
And this is all that Swedenborg claims that his Writings are in 
their relation to the Second Advent. 

6. General Principles. 

The Second Coming of the Lord is only a certain specific 
coming. There have been other comings. To understand the 
real nature of any one coming, we need to have some true idea of 
certain general principles relating to all of the Lord's comings. 

And first we need to have some true idea of Grod in His 
absolute nature, or at least in His practical relation to us 
as our Creator and Sustainer, — some true idea of tohat God 
really is and where He really is in His relation to us. When 
we think of Him as creating, or as the Cause, and thus origin 
and Father whence all being is, we cannot think of Him other- 
wise than as Life, than as everywhere and absolutely present 
— omnipresent — Life, Life which contains in it all the pos- 
sibilities of all that is and all that is to be ; for it is Life and 
only life that creates, — life in the seed that creates or evolves a 



166 SWEDENBORG AND THE NEW AGE. 

plant ; life in the egg that creates or evolves a bird, animal, or 
man. 

It is as the Word, — the Word as Spirit and Life, — which is, 
as it were, an effluence from God, — that God is related to all 
that is ; like as it is by its radiance that the sun is related to 
the earth, or to all that is outside of itself. As elsewhere 
stated, the "Word is, so to speak, God at work, God in the very 
act and process of creating or evolving from Himself, just as 
the radiance is the sun at work. 

All that is, and whether spiritual or natural, is a coming of the 
Lord ; and this means simply a manifestation of Him, and in a 
somewhat similar sense to that in which the body and all that 
belongs to it, and all that takes place through it or by means of 
it, is a coming or manifestation of the man within the body. 

* These comings of the Lord are of two kinds, ordinary and 
extraordinary. The ordinary comings or manifestations are 
creations or evolutions from the Divine into suns, earths, 
plants, animals, and men. The extraordinary comings are in 
verbal expressions, — Sacred Scripture, — the Incarnation, and 
at length in explanations of these. 

All these comings take place, never from arbitrary will or 
purpose, but always, as it were, spontaneously and exactly ac- 
cording to conditions, like as the primordial germ — whose in- 
most life and being is from the Divine — is evolved, or " comes," 
in the form of a plant or animal exactly according to conditions. 

All extraordinary comings take place through the agency of 
men, or of personal, finite humanity. This was the case when 
the Lord as the Word, that is to say, as living Truth, was 
clothed in human language, and was thus finited or formulated 
down into verbal truth ; and it was the case when the Word 
was, for another purpose, or in other conditions of humanity, 
" made flesh" or was clothed with a finite, personal humanity. 



* The rest of this chapter is an extract from the author's published lec- 
ture on this subject. 



THE BOOKS AND THE ADVENT. 167 

7. The Word unveiled. 

Now, these extraordinary comings, let us remember, have 
been as the Word clothed or veiled, and because of the extraor- 
dinary condition of mankind. But since about the middle 
of the last century, mankind, it is plain to the student of his- 
tory, have been coming into a different condition, and one in 
which a different coming or manifestation of the Lord has 
been taking place. This coming is, in its real nature, an 
opening or unveiling of the Word. 

The first step of this unveiling, it is plain, on a little reflec- 
tion, must have been in the form of an explanation. For 
mankind had lost all knowledge of the Word above the mere 
natural or literal meaning. They did not know that Sacred 
Scripture was the Word veiled, concealed from view, like the 
sun above the clouds, and so veiled in accommodation to man's 
state of diseased spiritual vision. They had lost the language 
in which it was written. They were reading even symbol and 
allegory as literal truth. The " serpent" that tempted and over- 
came the woman was to them a real animal ; " Noah's flood" 
a flood of material waters ; the " whale" that swallowed Jonah, 
a bona fide fish ; the " devil" that took Christ upon a " pin- 
nacle of the temple," and " upon an exceeding high moun- 
tain," a real personal devil, and the like. But a part of man- 
kind were coming into a state of rational manhood thought, 
and thus to see, though dimly at first, that all this and more 
was irrational. And this was the case with the best of men 
then living. And they " mourned" over their condition. 
These were what are called, in Matthew, the " tribes of the 
earth." They had had great reverence for their Scriptures as 
the Word of God. But now, from the very fact of their 
somewhat advanced, more rational condition, they were losing 
confidence in them. In fact, the Lord, as in the dim, early 
dawn, was coming to them in the form of a clearer and more 
rational perception of truth, even though not of a high order. 



168 SWEDENBORQ AND THE NEW AGE. 

How plain it is that what was most especially needed in that 
peculiar condition of mankind was an explanation of Sacred 
Scripture as being only the " garment," or only the formulated 
statement of truth ; whilst the real Truth was veiled within 
such garment or statement as the sunlight behind the clouds ! 
The men of that age were in the darkness as of midnight, 
and of a midnight without even stars to mitigate the dark- 
ness. And this means that they were destitute not only of 
truth, but of even a knowledge of truth. For, as the sun is a 
symbol of love and the moon of truth, so the stars are sym- 
bols of knowledge. And not only was the sun " darkened" 
and the moon had " failed to give her light," but the stars 
even " had fallen." And this means that, in that dark, wicked 
age of the Church, there was not only no love or charity, and 
hence no perception of truth among men, but that there was 
no knowledge even of truth or of spiritual principles. 

8. Knoidedge First Need' d. 
How plain, let me repeat, that what was needed by those 
who were in a state to somewhat realize their condition and 
to make an effort to rise out it, was knowledge I For as love 
or charity is the first thing to perish in a degenerating people, 
and truth or a perception of truth next and as a consequence, 
and a knowledge of truth last, so in a regenerating people, in 
the beginning, a knowledge of truth is the first thing needed, 
and it is the first thing also that can be restored. Spiritually 
blind men can he instructed in the way before it is possible 
for them to see the way, or whilst real truth would be even 
darkness rather than light to them. And how beautifully 
significant the fact that truth, or a perception of truth, can- 
not exist without love, as a sun, to shine down, as it were, 
upon the earth of the mind ; just as the moon, as a luminary, 
cannot exist without the sun ; whilst knowledges of truth may 
be intellectually acquired before a man is in a state to per- 
ceive truth, and may be acquired independently of that state ; 



THE BOOKS AND THE ADVENT. 1G9 

just as the stars can shine independently of the larger lumi- 
naries ! 

9. Kind of Knowledge. 

If knowledge, then, was what those people needed who, in 
that " midnight of the ages," were " looking for the morning," 
the question is, what kind of knowledge ? what kind, that 
men had not already received and perverted? what kind, I 
mean, did the then coming, rationally thinking man needy' 
We know something of his genius and character. I am 
speaking of the religious man, and religious, not in any limited 
ecclesiastical sense. I am speaking of the man who wants to 
understand himself, and understand his relation to others and 
to his God, or the great Father and sustainer of his being. I 
am speaking of the man who has a sort of vague intuition 
that human beings do not belong to time and space (done, but 
that they live right on and forever, after leaving this world ; 
of the man who has great reverence for the Bible, — perhaps 
a more or less superstitious regard for it, — as containing, with 
much valuable instruction and some evidences of its Divine 
origin, more that is mystical and incomprehensible, and also 
some, as interpreted ex ecdhedra, that is most repulsive to his 
reason. In a word, I am speaking of the rationally thinking 
man who is seeking for truth, and not scientific truth alone, 
but spiritual truth as well. What kind of knowledge above 
all other kinds does such a man want and need ? Is it not 
plain that it is the scientific and rational opening of that casket 
which has been so long held and valued, but valued, not as a 
casket, but as itself constituting a most precious treasure, and 
without knowing anything of the priceless jewels within, — with- 
out, perhaps, even suspecting that such jewels were there ? 
Is it not plain that an explanation of the Bible, an explanation 
of it from a knowledge of the language in which it was 
written, would give the kind of knowledge which humanity 
was then, by little and little, coming into a state to understand 
and be benefited by ? 



170 SWEDENBORQ AND THE NEW AGE. 

10. The Man Needed as an Instrument. 

Now is it not plain that such explanation, such opening or 
unveiling of the Word, was, so far, a new coming of the Lord, 
but coming or manifestation, like all the preceding comings, as 
the Word? And is it not plain that such coming, or the 
coming in that limited, external sense as an explanation of 
the Word, must take place through the instrumentality of a 
man, as had been the case with all the preceding ones ? 

But who in that dark age could make that explanation ? 
Certainly no other than he who had experienced that coming 
in his own person ; certainly no other than he who had ac- 
quired the recpiisite knowledge, and was, at the same time, 
recipient of the light. And such, in that age, would be a 
most extraordinary man. Well, every new and great develop- 
ment in human affairs has been inaugurated by some extraor- 
dinary man, by some one far in advance of his age. And so 
it was in this case. 

11. Style of Sacred Scripture. 

To explain the Word, it was necessary, first, to understand 
the principles according to which it was written. And what 
were these principles? The Word as Sacred Scripture was 
written in a Divine style. It was the Divine thought, rather, 
the Divine Truth, Divine Light evolved. Sacred Scripture is 
the lowest verbal form of the Word, just as nature is the 
lowest material form. There must, therefore, be a like rela- 
tion existing between Sacred Scripture and the Word, as be- 
tween nature and the Word. And to understand the former 
relation we need to understand the latter. The relation be- 
tween nature and the Word is that of cause and effect. Hence 
there is a correspondence of nature to the Word, — or to the 
Lord as the Word, — as of an effect to its cause. Sacred 
Scripture, being virtually written by the Lord, was written 
according to the principles of such correspondence. It could 



THE BOOKS AND THE ADVENT. 171 

not have been otherwise. For the Word must descend into 
ultimates, — and whether in the form of verbal teachings or 
material objects, — according to its own laws or the principles 
of its own nature, just as is the case with the potential germ 
of the seed in becoming a developed plant or tree. 

12. Science of Correspondences. 

Men once were in intuitive perception of these principles ; 
they intuitively saw the relation of natural things as effects to 
spiritual principles as causes. And though, by degeneration, 
they, at length, became incapable of such perception, they still 
for a long time retained a knowledge of such relation, under 
the form of what was called the " Science of Correspond- 
ences ;" but which Science, as mankind became more corrupt, 
was at length lost ; and the world has been ignorant of it ever 
since, and, as a consequence, ignorant of the true interpreta- 
tion of Sacred Scripture. Now, therefore, to be able to ex- 
plain truly Sacred Scripture, a knowledge of this " lost 
Science" was indispensable. Who could acquire such knowl- 
edge ? Who but he whose natural tastes would lead him to 
an investigation of the laws of God in nature ? Who but the 
devout scientist and philosopher? And he even could "know 
only in part." He even, however learned in all that belongs 
to nature, could see only the material body, as it were, of those 
grand principles of correspondence, which, like Jacob's ladder, 
rest on the earth, but whose upper part is lost in the clouds. 
To see the " angels ascending and descending," it was neces- 
sary to have the vision opened so as to see the upper part. 
To see the soul in the body and thus the relation of the two to 
each other, it was necessary to have the spiritual, as well as 
the scientific and philosophical vision quickened. And this 
implies a high state of regeneration. There is no other law 
by which a man can come into a state of spiritual illumina- 
tion, and thus of " internal inspiration" or " revelation from 
perception," than by regeneration. It is only when a man 



172 SWEDENBORG AND THE NEW AGE. 

has arrived at that high state that he *can see both ends of the 
ladder, both ends — the soul and the body — of those grand 
principles of correspondence by which the Word was written ; 
so that the thoughts, like the angels on the ladder, could as- 
cend and descend and thus explore the causes as well as their 
effects. It is only as a man is in the very light itself of the 
Word as " living truth," that he can really understand and ex- 
plain the Word in its form of verbal truth or Sacred Scripture. 
And to be in such light, is virtually to be " instructed by the 
Lord," is, in fact, to have the Lord practically dwelling in you 
as the very life of your life and light of your light. 

13. The Expounder. 

It was such a man, a man thus qualified, thus highly re- 
generated, that was required to " open the Word," and to do 
so by rediscovering and restoring the long lost key to its in- 
terpretation. Swedenborg, as we have seen, rose to that high 
state. 

He had a thirst, a taste, and a capacity for those very 
kinds of knowledge without which he would have lacked the 
basis on which the science of correspondences rests. He was 
equally a searcher for the laws of God in Sacred Scripture as 
in nature. And he was not only a searcher but a doer. It 
was to the fact that he was a doer that he was indebted for 
his high state of regeneration and consequent illumination, 
without which he would have been like other scientific men, 
in the light, not of causes, but of effects only. In mere 
scientific light he never could have discovered the relation of 
natural effects, or the things of nature, to spiritual causes, and 
he never could have received the spiritual light, the instruction 
or illumination from the Lord, — from the Lord as the Word, — 
while he was reading its letter, to enable him to understand 
and explain that relation. He must not only have the facts 
in nature, but the light to shine on them, before he could see 
their spiritual significance. And though regeneration would 



THE BOOKS AND THE ADVENT. 173 

have given him the "lights yet without the scientific facts, with- 
out a knowledge of the natural principles, the light would 
have been like that of the sun on deserts of rocks and sands. 
The angels could not aid him, for, though regenerated men, 
and therefore in the very light itself of the Word, they were 
without the ultimate principles. The Lord only could in- 
struct him, but the Lord, let it be distinctly understood, as the 
Word, thus as the influx of living, Divine light. Swedenborg 
had laid up in the grand store-house of his own memory, as 
the result of his own vast labor and experiences, all the knowl- 
edges requisite, when illuminated by the Word as spirit and 
life, to enable him to fulfil his mission as expounder of the 
internal sense of Sacred Scripture. It is plain that he needed, 
and could receive, aid from no other source than the Lord 
alone, but the Lord as the all-illuminating, living Truth itself. 
He stood alone, therefore, with the Lord, as His chosen servant 
for a certain mission, just as the angels do, just as all regen- 
erated men do, and each as the Lord's chosen servant for a 
specific work. He wrote as the Lord dictated to him, but 
dictated, not in words, not in formulated principles, but in 
"revelation from perception." The Lord gave him simply 
illuminating Truth ; he by his own rational faculties, as thus 
illuminated, finited that truth, as it were, into verbal expres- 
sions, into specific doctrines or teachings, according to his own 
wonderfully developed understanding. It is plain that the 
influx from the Divine into his mind must have been most 
powerful, but thus powerful, because his mind had become so 
open and receptive, and because his regenerated will had be- 
come so perfectly subordinate to the Divine will, — as is the 
case with all regenerated men and angels ; and it is plain 
that his rational faculties must have been correspondingly 
quickened and strengthened ; so that he wrote in no sense 
or manner whatever, as a passive instrument or tool in the 
hands of the Lord. And let me repeat here, and with, if 
le, greater emphasis, what has been said before, 



174 SWEDENBORG AND THE NEW AGE. 

Swedenborg was never more himself, and never was what he 
wrote more his own, at the same time that it was so purely 
the Lord's, than when thus so completely the Lord's servant. 
His faculties were never in so intense activity, and he was 
never so completely in possession of them as his own, as 
when receiving most purely and powerfully the Divine influx ; 
and the measure of his manhood was never so great, and never 
so distinctively his own. For it must be always true, that the 
more of the Lord there is in a man, the more fully and per- 
fectly he is a man, and is himself. 

14. What Makes Man Man. 

It is the Divine that makes man man ; for the Divine is 
itself man in his highest essence and cause. The more purely 
and fully, and thus powerfully present the Divine is in man, 
therefore, the more fully and perfectly he is a man. Man is, 
therefore, no true servant of the Lord, but in proportion as he 
is fully and intensely a man ; and this means, but in proportion 
as he acts in freedom and according to his own, not another's, 
not the Lord's, rationality. 

15. His own Writings. 

Swedenborg's writings, then, are his own writings, and in 
the fullest conceivable sense of the phrase his own. They are 
so fully his own, because he was so completely a servant of the 
Lord. If they are not his own, then he was nothing but an 
instrument ; he was not a servant. My pen is only an instru- 
ment of my thoughts, not their servant. There is an infinite 
difference between an instrument and a servant. What Sweden- 
borg received from the Lord was Divine, was the Lord Him- 
self as the Word, as the living truth ; but the formulation of 
that truth into finite principles, and the expression of those 
principles in language, was purely the work of the freest and 
intensest action of his own rational faculties ; the Lord had 
nothing to do with such formulation and expression, further 



THE BOOKS AND THE ADVENT. U5 

than to fill him as a man, — just as He fills all men, each ex- 
actly according to his measure, — and to thus give him power 
to act as a man. It is because Swedenborg was in a condition 
to act so completely from the Lord, that what he did was so 
completely his own. For regeneration, thus a more pure and 
more perfect reception of the Divine, does not make a man 
less, but more himself, more a man in the image and likeness 
of God, and thus more perfectly a servant of God. And 
herein lies the wonderful adaptation of these Writings to 
the man of this new age ; it is in the fact that they are the 
Writings of a man, a man of the age, a man so completely a 
man, and thus so perfectly a servant of the Lord. 

Such was the man, and such are the Writings of the man ; 
what is their relation to that extraordinary advent or manifes- 
tation of the Lord which is now taking place ? 

Such advent actually took place in Swedenborg. The Lord 
came in great power and glory to him, — rather in him, — but 
the great power and glory of Himself as the Word, thus of 
Himself as the living Truth, living Light. He so came or so 
manifested Himself, because Swedenborg's mind was in such a 
condition that He could so come. And as He came to Sweden- 
borg, precisely so has He since been coming, and is He going 
to continue to come, to all men, but to each in power and glory 
according to his condition and measure. We may regard 
Swedenborg as van-courier and exemplar of His coming, as in 
a sense inaugurating and visibly ushering in the new age. 
We may regard him as actually receiving the Lord, the Lord 
as the Word and as the Word in its " spirit and life," as, in- 
deed, the " Spirit of Truth," into his own mind, and then, by 
his writings, preparing the way, or showing the way, by which 
others could receive Him. He did this hy his writings. Thus, 
in a certain external sense his writings are the Advent of the 
Lord ; they are so, in so far as they open or unveil Him as 
the Word to our understanding, — in so far as they show by 
explanation the internal sense of the Word, or its real nature 



176 SWEDENBORG AND THE NEW AGE. 

as spirit and life, or as the Lord Himself. In this showing we 
intellectually see a higher manifestation, a more interior coming 
of the Lord than man ever saw before. But it is plain that 
no human language, no verbal statement or explanation about 
the Lord, can bring Him to us in His " great power and 
glory." This, from the very nature of the case, must be an 
internal, personal experience, and of each individual, and only 
as he puts away his sins and thus renders his mind consciously 
receptive of the Lord ; and in His coming, not " with observa- 
tion," not with any outward show, but as the very " Spirit of 
Truth." For this, namely, the " Spirit op Truth," was to 
be, according to His promise, that " other Comforter," that 
next coming or manifestation of the Lord. 

1G. Why and When the Lord Comes. 

If now we understand the real nature of the Lord as the 
very living Word itself, that is to say, as the very " Spirit of 
Truth" itself, in His Second Coming, if we also understand 
the relation of man, and especially of the one man, Sweden- 
borg, to that coming, we are prepared to see and see clearly 
why He did not come before, and why He came so soon. For 
all of the Lord's comings, as we have seen, have been simply 
manifestations of Himself, and have been owing, not at all to 
any change in Him, — any change in what He was or did, — 
but entirely to change in recipient humanity. The state of 
humanity has always been the occasion, and also the measure 
of His comings. 

17. Humanity in the Middle of the Last Century. 

Humanity was in a terrible condition about the middle of 
the last century, — especially the ecclesiastical part of it. It 
was the midnight of the church. Why a midnight? why is 
there a midnight of the day ? is it because the sun has turned 
from the earth, or the earth from the sun ? And why does 
not the mornins: come sooner ? is it because the sun tarries ? 



THE BOOKS AND THE ADVENT. 177 

is it not rather because the hemisphere lingers in its own 
shadow? And does the Lord turn away from mankind? 
Never ! How could He do it ? He is to the world of mind 
what the sun is to the world of matter. And can the sun 
turn itself away from earth ? Can it even hide itself from 
earth ? can it withhold, for an instant, anything it has to give ? 
is it not, on the contrary, from its very nature, eternally shining 
and in the fulness of its glory ? It is man that turns him- 
self from the Lord. But for mind or spirit to turn, is for 
state to change. For God is not in space without you, but is 
within you. And you turn from Him, when you pervert the 
good and truth which you receive from Him, that is to say, 
when you live a selfish and evil life. While you are living 
this kind of life, you are like the earth at night turned from 
the sun. The appearance is, that the Lord has left you ; but, 
on the contrary, you have left Him. Do you not see, then, 
why the Lord delays His coming to you ? Do you not see that 
your own state makes it impossible for Him to come? Do 
you not see that He can never come but as you change, but as 
you cease to do evil and learn to do good ; precisely as the 
sun cannot come to earth, but as the earth changes, but as it 
turns itself round to the sun. How plain, then, the reason 
why the Lord did not come sooner ! Man was perverting and 
profaning the Word as formulated, verbal truth : how could he 
receive Him, then, as the " Spirit of Truth?" The wonder is, 
when we come to understand the real nature of the case, not 
why the Lord did not come sooner, but why He came so soon, 
— why He came or could come, at all, in that dark age. 

18. Why the Lord Came When He Did. 

Why, then, did the Lord come so soon? Because it was 
the " fulness of time," that is, of state ; because there was a 
crisis in the condition of humanity, and a consequent change. 
Every disease has its crisis. And this was the condition of 
humanity, — it was diseased. And the disease had come to its 



178 SWEDENBORG AND THE NEW AGE. 

crisis or consummation ; it had spent its force, had done its 
worst. " Prodigal" humanity had gone to its extremest en- 
durance, even to filling itself " with the husks that the swine 
did eat." The disease must now prove fatal, unless its terrible 
severity should bring into action some rallying energies which 
had, as it were, been lying dormant. " And at midnight there 
was a cry made : Behold, the bridegroom cometh, go ye out 
to meet him." It was midnight ; like the sun at that crisis of 
the night, the Lord was farthest away ; humanity was in the 
blackest state of spiritual darkness ; its evil lusts, like the task- 
masters of Egypt, had become very exacting, and very oppres- 
sive in their burdens. But all men were not alike. The very 
extremes of suffering had, in some cases, brought out and 
brought into action redeeming qualities. They had lamps, 
and also had some oil in their vessels with their lamps. They 
were " looking for the morning." There was in them the 
" tender branch of the fig-tree putting forth leaves," sweet 
tokens of coming summer. All in that wicked age were not 
buried in the darkness of the dark valley ; some were groping 
for the acclivity of the mountain, where they could begin to 
climb up towards the bright sunshine at the top. Such per- 
sons were in a state to see their sad condition and mourn over 
it. They saw their destitution ; they were conscious that their 
riotous living had brought them into that state ; they knew 
they were feeding on husks, and yearned for better, spiritual 
food. They longed for the day, and were in effort to put 
away their sins, that the day might come. They reverenced 
and obeyed the Word as natural, or verbal truth, and were 
thus coming into a state to see and love the Word as the 
Spirit of Truth. And, so far, this was a second coming of the 
Lord to them. These and such persons were, as it were, on 
the mountain-tops of humanity, to receive first the tokens of 
coming day. The Lord came to them, though in the dim 
distance, because He could come, or rather came so soon, be- 
cause they were in a state to receive Him ; just as the sun 



THE BOOKS AND THE ADVENT. 179 

comes so soon or comes first to the natural mountain- tops be- 
cause they can first receive him. The Lord could not help 
coming in that midnight of universal humanity, any more than 
the sun can help ascending towards the morning when it has 
passed the nadir; any more than the ripened bud can help 
opening into a leaf or flower when it feels the warmth of spring. 
The Lord would have come centuries sooner as the Spirit of 
Truth, as the Word unveiled, instead of as the Word veiled, 
if humanity had only furnished the conditions which alone 
could have rendered it possible for Him to so come. 

19. Results of Second Advent. 

But the results of this Second Coming, this coming as the 
Spirit of Truth, as living light in the mind, — what are they? 
We can measure them best by contrast. The Lord's prior 
comings, — comings as the living truth formulated into verbal 
truth, or Sacred Scripture, — were followed by comparatively 
external results, a change in the object and external forms of 
worship, and, to some extent, a change in external life. His 
coming as the Word " made flesh" released man from bond- 
age, so that he could return to obedience to the commandments 
as laws of life. This coming also told him that his real foes 
were not without, were not other nations and other people, 
but within his own being, the household of his own mind. 
The coming now taking place as the Spirit of Truth, as the 
living light actually flowing into the mind and illuminating it, 
is to him as the restoration of sight to the blind ; it enables 
him to see what was before only described to him in words. 
And this is a wonderful difference ; it is as the difference be- 
tween brightly shining light revealing to your eye the whole 
landscape, in all the symmetry and beauty of form and color, 
and having that landscape described to you ; it is really the 
difference between a mind actually illuminated from within, 
and a mind only verbally instructed from without. The Spirit 
of Truth, the Word unveiled, comes into the mind through an 



ISO SWEDENBORQ AND THE NEW AGE. 

" inner door," and as living light ; this is the door at which Christ 
as the Word stands and knocks ; and for us to open which is 
to put away our sins, and thus remove the darkness which 
prevents His coming in unto us. The Word as Sacred Scrip- 
ture comes to us through an outer door, but not as light, but 
as verbal precepts about light and about life. A man with 
the Word as the Spirit of Truth shining in his mind, is in 
intuitive perception, thus in " internal inspiration." And the 
results of such perception are marvellous. We see them, at 
the present time, or in the present phase of developing 
humanity, in every department of human thought. It is this 
that makes this age different from all other ages. Sweden- 
borg, as shown by his life and his works, was a most wonder- 
ful exemplar of this kind of coming of the Lord. 

Of course, the Lord as the Spirit of Truth, or living light 
itself, manifests Himself differently in different degrees of the 
mind, or in the different states or stages of regeneration, and 
in different kinds and forms of mind. Results of such influx 
of light are as varied as the minds themselves are which are 
recipients of the light ; and such variety is infinite. It is just 
as it is in nature. The sunlight flowing into one plant, into 
one flower, leaf or bud, manifests itself differently from what 
it does while flowing into another. And so it is also in the 
different stages of forming and ripening fruit. There is such 
infinite variety in nature, not because there is any difference 
in the inflowing life, but entirely because of the difference 
of recipiency of such life. Just so it is in mind or spirit. 
The manifested results of the Lord's coming must necessarily 
always be according to the tastes, and capacities, and char- 
acter, and occupation of the man. They must be of one kind 
with the inventor ; of another with the scientist ; of another 
with the artist ; of another with the novelist, the poet, the 
statesman, the theologian, and so on. It is from the light 
flowing into the mind as the Spirit of Truth, that we have in 
this age such wonderful developments in machinery, in litera- 



THE BOOKS AND THE ADVENT. 181 

ture, in science and philosophy, in all the fine arts, as well as 
in religion, — in all the appliances and conditions and circum- 
stances of human life, in fact. The sewing-machine, the rail- 
road, the telegraph, the telephone, the steam-engine, and the 
rest, with all their wonderful mechanisms and capabilities, 
could not possibly have been the result of any other coming of 
the Lord than as the Spirit of Truth. This kind of coming 
warms all the faculties of the mind into life and energy. It 
quickens and sharpens and intensifies the perceptions. It is 
as the summer's sun to the fields and meadows ; it changes 
what was before cold, dead and barren, into blooming life and 
beauty. The mind at length becomes a paradise, and the 
world without, a glorious living outcome and thus representa- 
tive image of the world within. All nature, and even the 
commonest affairs of life, even the humblest duties, become, 
though in a sense unchanged, transformed and transfigured and 
all aglow with living beauty. The Son of Man, — God as the 
living Light, — is seen " coming in the clouds of heaven," and 
not only so, not only in the letter of Sacred Scripture, but 
in every natural object also. In the fulness of this coming, 
everything will be seen to be alive with His presence, as the 
lovely human face is seen to be alive with the intelligent, 
loving spirit behind or within the face. For all that is, will 
then be seen to be, as it were, and as it really is, the mani- 
fested face of the Divine. God will not then be " afar off," but 
always "at hand," and always speaking to us, always giving us 
lessons of love and wisdom, and from all that is within us and 
from all that is around us. All things will be transparent of 
Him, as the all-pervading, loving Spirit of Truth. As with 
Moses when he came to the " mountain of God, to Horeb," 
so with loving, rational, regenerated humanity of this New 
Jerusalem age, as it rises to its spiritual mountain state ; *not 
only the "bush will burn with fire," but every tree, every 
plant, every hill and mountain and valley, every landscape, 
every flowing stream, every rain-drop, every pebble even, " will 



182 SWEDENBORG AND THE NEW AGE. 

burn" with the presence of God, with the presence of God 
as the very Spirit of Truth, will glow with living fire, and 
yet will not be "consumed." And all this will be, not from 
any transfiguration without, but from a transfiguration within ; 
not from a coming of the Lord with " observation," with a " lo, 
here," or " lo, there," but from a coming of the Lord " within 
you." 



CHAPTER VIII. 

CHRIST AND SWEDENBORG .* 

1. What Christ is to Man. 

Christ says, " Be not ye called Rabbi ; for one is your 
Master, even Christ ; and all ye are brethren." 

Christ our Master or Teacher ! What is really meant by 
this ? Who and what is Christ ? What is really His relation 
to us ? What does He do for us, and how does He do it ? 
The thinking man wants answers to these questions, and he 
must have answers, or be of those who are accounted as unbe- 
lievers. 

We have many things to unlearn before we can truly learn 
who or what Christ was and is. He is infinitely more than 
the loving and self-sacrificing being whom we see, in our im- 
aginations, as living on this earth a few centuries ago ; a being 
with finite and measured shape and outline. That, as then 
conceived of, was the Christ for that dark age, for men too 
carnal-minded to conceive of Him or have Him revealed to 
them in His higher, true character. That was the Christ whom 
men have learned to love, because He loved them ; just as "sin- 
ners love those who love them." He was their Rabbi because 
He personally taught them and cared for them. In this, and 
by His pure and loving life, thus by His example, He was a 
" bright and shining Light." Since that dark age, He has been 
loved and adored for what He then did for men, and because, 

* This chapter is from the author's printed discourse. 

183 



184 SWEDENBORQ AND TEE NEW AGE. 

as a result of what He did, He gave them hope of a happy 
hereafter, because He was their Savior. 

All this is well, until men rise out of this low, selfish, mere 
carnal-minded state. Such men have found their Christ 
" risen." He now comes to them, as He promised that He 
would do, as the " Spirit of Truth." And such men now 
understand what is meant by Christ as the Word, and how 
it was the Word which was, " in the beginning, with God, and 
was God, and made all things," that was " made flesh." To 
such men Christ is now all lovable and adorable, not because 
He has loved and saved them, but because He is, in Himself, 
in His own real nature, lovable and adorable. 

But how is this ? We shall know how it is when we come 
to know what is really meant by the Word, and thus by Christ 
as the Word. The Word is, in its real nature, Life and 
Light ; " in Him [the Word] was Life and the Life was the 
Light of men." How full of meaning ! and how unmistakable 
the meaning ! The Word, or — which is the same — God, as 
" Life" creates. And is not this so ? does anything, so far as 
we can see, come into being but from the operation of life, — 
the plant, the animal, men ? The Word as Light shows the 
way of life. how wonderful ! Is not Christ, the Word, 
then, in Himself, and for what He is in Himself, lovable and 
adorable ? 

And now how plain what is meant by Christ — the Word — 
as " Master" or Teacher. He is the "Light," and this means 
that He is the living Truth, — not verbal truth, but truth 
that internally floics, as it were, into the mind, shines in it and 
illuminates it. 

Such is Christ as Rabbi, or Master, in the present — which is 
the New Jerusalem — age of the world. He is the Christ in 
His now second coming, not personally, but as the " Spieit 
of Truth," and coming, therefore, net outside, but within the 
mind itself of men. 



CHRIST AND SWEDENBORG. 185 

2. The Man of the New Jerusalem. 

There is a great difference between the . character of the 
coming, or New Jerusalem phase of developing humanity, and 
that of all preceding ages. This difference is as that between 
ripening manhood and the preceding stages of infancy, child- 
hood, and youth. And we meet with practical illustrations 
of this difference every day, especially among religionists, some 
of whom are perfectly satisfied with what is taught ; they have 
unbounded respect for the " Fathers," in other words, for the 
" authorities." They regard themselves as all right if they 
think and believe as the Fathers thought and believed, — and no 
matter if the Fathers did live and form their opinions and 
creeds in a less mature and a darker age of human intellect. 
And there are some possessing these traits of character, even 
among professed believers in the doctrines of the New Church. 
Such persons refer everything to Swedenborg. The first ques- 
tion with them is not, is it true ? does it look reasonable ? but, 
what does Swedenborg say on the subject ? is it in accordance 
with his teachings ? If so, this settles it ; they do not need 
to think any more about it ; their minds are at rest ; they are 
perfectly satisfied. But you talk with them about it, and you 
will see that they have really got nothing, nothing that has en- 
tered into the real fibre of their own mind. Nothing that they 
have is theirs ; it is but borrowed material which they have 
taken only within the walls of their external memory. They 
can, perhaps, tell you all that Swedenborg says on the subject, 
and they are proud of their knowledge, though such men have 
very little that is their own. They have a plenty of words, a 
plenty of borrowed thoughts, but little or no real light. Their 
intellectual stores are as borrowed grain in the sack, and not as 
bread digested, appropriated, and entering into the very sub- 
stance of the tissues. Such men lack the most essential ele- 
ments of the real New Jerusalem. They simply know ; they 
do not possess, do not own. They are mere Swedenborgians, 
9* 



186 SWEDENBORG AND THE NEW AGE. 

as others are Calvinists, Lutherans, or "Wesleyans. They 
differ from these mainly in having a different Rabbi. They 
may be good and true men, but not men of real manhood. 
They are the last lingering remnants of an age that is passing 
away. They are not, in the real fibre of their nature, of the 
real New Jerusalem. 

With another class of men the case is entirely different. 
They are men of the New Age. They possess its genius and 
imbibe its spirit. They love its manhood character. They 
have more respect for an infidel who is a man, than for a blind 
believer who is not a man. No mere authority, but the one 
only Master, is authority for them. Everything must be 
brought to the test and approval of their own thought before 
they can believe it. That another has thought it out and be- 
lieved, is no satisfying element or condition of faith for them. 
Their belief must have its basis within their own minds. 

Such is the character of the men of the real New Jerusalem. 
And such men must, of necessity, remain irreligious and un- 
believing, until they can see something more rational than the 
religious systems of the past, and until the Sacred Scriptures 
are so explained as to be relieved of so much that, in the letter, 
is an offence to the sensibilities of a pure, loving heart, and 
that does such violence to the unsophisticated intuitions of 
reason and common sense. Such men can never believe that 
the Sacred Scriptures are of Divine Origin, until they are sat- 
isfied that they are capable of a very different explanation from 
what has been given them by the " Fathers." For men of this 
character believe only as they themselves see. They take 
nothing requiring intellectual thought on mere authority. 
They belong to an age whose blindly trusting childhood and 
easily misguided youthhood are passing away ; an age in 
which humanity is fast advancing into its rational, Godlike 
manhood. And this is a humanity which must, for itself, ex- 
amine and weigh and judge. 



CHRIST AND SWEDENBORG. 187 

3. Light of Experience. 

And is not this the genius of the present and coming age of 
the world ? And do we not see this manifesting itself in every 
department of human thought? The dust-covered tomes of 
olden time are now taken from their alcoves, not, as formerly, 
as authority, but as gratulatory evidence, by contrast, of mod- 
ern progress, or to test the degree of present advancement. 
The number of those is now rapidly increasing, who resort, not 
alone to books, not to authoritative teachers, but to free ra- 
tional thought, or to the revelations that are made to such 
thought for instruction. For the true light comes, not through 
books, or teachers, or Kabbis, or fathers ; but it comes as the 
result of the exercise of free, rational, regenerated manhood 
thought. And, inasmuch as this thought is excited by love, 
or is, as it were, love itself thinking, the light is brighter and 
brighter as the love is purer, thus as the mind becomes more 
perfectly regenerated. 

And this kind of mind is becoming more and more charac- 
teristic of the age in which we live. If you now ask him 
whose mind partakes of the real genius of this age, whether 
certain new doctrines are correct, he will not go to some Rabbi, 
some favorite authority ; he will not first consult some author- 
ity, as Calvin, or Doddridge, or Wesley, or Swedenborg; on 
the contrary, he will first take the question into the crucible of 
his own thought ; he will first open the windows of his own 
mind towards heaven ; he will do this by that kind of inquiry 
which alone can render his mind receptive of the light of 
heaven. If a man looks to others for truth, he gets only 
verbal truth ; if he looks within — Christ is within — he gets 
living truth, that truth which illuminates the mind, and thus 
gives it keener perceptions and a truer understanding. If 
such a person goes to authorities, it is to those whose opinions 
and teachings he has found to be in harmony with both reason 
and revelation, and who have drunk from the stream, perhaps, 



188 SWEDENBORG AND THE NEW AGE. 

higher up towards its Divine fountain, or who have received 
light into more highly regenerated minds than his own. And 
he goes to them, not as " masters," but as " brethren ;" not as 
to one who himself, like Christ, gives light, but who, like him- 
self, receives light, and from the same Divine Source whence 
all receive it. 

4. Oracles. 

And this is the use of " brethren," of an oracle, or of one 
who speaks with more or less of authority because from the light, 
and thus with the authority, of his use or calling. Yet do not 
mistake him for your master ; he does not give you the truth 
which you receive ; he has none to give you ; he is only a re- 
cipient, like yourself, though he receives, it may be, into a purer 
vessel and in larger measure, and you therefore regard him an 
elder brother. 

And such is Swedenborg to those who, like him, are of the 
real New Jerusalem. He is an elder brother. Moreover, he 
speaks from the light of a peculiar use or office. We regard his 
writings as true and as of the very highest of finite authority. 
And yet they are not our Master. They are, at most, only 
true verbal statements of truth. The Lord as the Word, thus 
as the truth, is the only Light, the only " true Light that 
lighteth every man that coineth into the world." The Lord as 
such " true light" — and light actually shining in the mind — is 
the only acknowledged Master of the real man of the New 
Jerusalem. Swedenborg's writings are only explanations of 
truth. No mere verbal forms of truth, however much cause 
we may have for confidence in them, can be acknowledged as 
master by the real Godlike man of this and the coming age. 
Such writings give no real light to the mind. They only show 
the way to the Light. The Sacred Scriptures even, in the 
letter, or as mere verbal statements of truth, do not give any 
real living light ; they are the basis and continent, and thus 
tempering mediums of the Light, as the clouds are of the sun- 
light. And thought, grounded in love, is the only vessel into 



CHRIST AND SWEDENBORG. 189 

which the true light, or Christ, the Word, as the true light, 
can flow. When you read Sacred Scripture, you get from the 
letter only verbal precepts of life ; you do not get from the 
letter living truth; but if you read devoutly, with your 
thoughts grounded in love and charity, living truth as living 
light flows into the miner*; your mind receives the very "spirit 
of truth," or the very "spirit and life" of the Word, of which 
the letter is only the outer garment. The light thus received 
— and which is Christ your master — manifests itself in the 
mind, in truer thoughts, keener perceptions, brighter intuitions, 
and clearer convictions. You get an influx of no such light 
from any other writings. The truth of all other writings is 
measured out to you simply by what they soy. You may be 
informed, but not enlightened, by them. It is only Christ in 
His second coming as the " spirit of truth" that can really 
enlighten the mind. Swedenborg's writings are, at best, only 
verbal truth. They have nothing in them above the letter, as 
the Sacred Scriptures have. They are in no sense, then, our 
Master. Our Master is truth as unshaded light shining in the 
mind, and truth as we see it, not as somebody else sees it and 
tells us about it. Swedenborg — as every truly regenerated man 
does — saw by Christ as the very spirit of truth ; but he did not 
give us that spirit of truth ; he did not write it ; he could no 
more write that kind of truth than you can write the sunlight. 
He only described it. Thus we see the infinite difference be- 
tween his writings, or any other mere verbal statements of truth, 
and Christ, or truth in its Divine or spiritual form as our Master. 
Who or what, then, is Swedenborg? What is the particular 
office and use of his writings ? I answer, Swedenborg simply 
takes us by the hand and leads us to our real Master and 
Father. He has, so to speak, gone up before us ; and now he 
tells us how to go up. He has himself sought out the way, 
and now he shows us the way. This is all he does. He does 
not give us the light ; but he explains it, explains where it is, 
and the way to get it. And thus we go to him, not as our 



190 SWEDENBORO AND THE NEW AGE. 

master, but as one who, if we will follow his directions, or fol- 
low his example, indeed, will lead us to our master. 

5. Revealed by Explanation. 

His great mission was, by explanation, to open the in- 
ternal sense of the Sacred Scriptures ; to open it as far as 
explanation could do it ; was, by explanation, to uncover the 
Fountain of living waters ; was to show how He who " be- 
came Flesh — " God with us" — was the Word, and was the 
" true Light that lighteth every man that cometh into the 
world." But thus uncovering the fountain does not give us 
of its sweet waters ; to know even all that he knew, or all 
that he has taught about this fountain, would not enable us to 
drink of it. Before we can drink, we must " thirst" for the 
waters ; and we must have a vessel formed into which to re- 
ceive them. He shows us how this vessel is formed ; and shows 
us that, in proportion as it is formed, we thirst and it is filled. 
He tells us where the Fountain is, what it is, and how we can 
go to it ; and he tells us as one who has already drunk of it ; 
he tells us how the Word that was made Flesh and dwelt 
among us is that fountain, and how the Sacred Scripture, 
concerning whose meaning there has always been so much 
doubt, is only as the outer garment or walls of the fountain. 

He does not say, " Come to me as your master." He does 
not say, " Beceive what I say as authority, or as Divine, for I 
am only your brother. What I receive is divine, is living truth, 
is, as it were, God speaking to me ; for I receive from Christ as 
our common Master. But what I give is not divine, for I give 
only explanations of truth, and as I, a finite being, conceive of 
it. I give truth only as it is finited into thoughts, ideas, prin- 
ciples, in the crucible of my own mind, and thus only in words. 
The true light does not pass through me to you. I can give 
you a knowledge of truth ; I can explain to you what truth is, 
and what are the conditions of its reception ; just as the physi- 
ologist can give you knowledge of the influx from the brain into 



CHRIST AND SWEDENBORG. 191 

the body, and can explain what that influx is, and what are the 
conditions of its reception. But I cannot give you truth, any 
more than the physiologist can give the life of the brain to the 
body. For truth, as I have said, is life, is the Divine life. I 
can receive it as life, but cannot give it as life. Christ alone, 
who is the spirit and the life of the Word, can give you truth. 
I can tell you how to form the vessel, but He alone can fill it : 
just as I can explain the sunlight to you ; but the sun alone 
can give it to you. If your eyes are diseased, so that they 
are closed against the sunlight, I can tell you how they can 
be cured and opened ; or I can tell you, if your vision is 
obstructed by clouds, how you can rise on a mountain above 
the clouds into the sunlight, but I can never give you the 
sunlight. Truth is the spiritual sunlight." 

And thus it is plain what is the relation of Swedenborg's 
writings to us. They are not the truth, but are, in verbal 
explanations, sure guides to the truth. And we are to receive 
them, not as the light of the Holy City, but as guides to and 
on the way to the Holy City. And this way is simply the way 
of regeneration ; is the way by which we become redeemed 
from the infirmities and the darkness of our lower nature, 
and thus the way by which we become capable of receiving 
truth from Christ as our Master ; is the way by which truly 
rational mind is formed and prepared as a vessel into which 
truth from the Lord, as living light, can flow. 

6. The Crucible of Thought. 

And such mind can be developed only by little and little, 
and only as, step by step in its progress, it freely and ration- 
ally does its own thinking. Everything must pass through 
the crucible of its own free thought, must be examined and 
tried by the test of its own reason, and even though its reason 
be, as yet, but small in its development ; even all the teachings 
of Swedenborg must pass through this crucible, — they will do 
so — he meant that they should do so — if our minds possess, 



192 SWEDENBORG AND THE NEW AGE. 

so far as they are developed, the real character and spirit of 
the New Jerusalem. And this was the character of his mind, 
and this is the reason why he advanced so rapidly and in such 
a direct way, to the light of the Holy City. This is the reason 
why he became capable of receiving, in such large and full 
measure, truth from Christ as his master. And so he tells us 
that we can really receive nothing but what we receive ration- 
ally, and can really believe nothing but what we can see, or 
only so far as we can see. 

Let us not natter ourselves, then, that we are necessarily of 
the New Jerusalem, because we believe and love its doctrines. 
This love and faith must be of an entirely different character 
from what has existed in any previous age or phase of human- 
ity. There have been other masters than Christ in all other 
ages, and He has been truly acknowledged as master in none 
of them. The nature of the faith in all these ages has been 
like that of childhood and youth. It has been founded only 
on external evidence, or only on authority ; there has been no 
rational conviction ; the clergy have derived it from the 
" fathers," and the people from the clergy. Thus the fathers 
have been the masters of the clergy, and the clergy of the 
people. This has been peculiarly the case in the age that is 
now passing away. The time has been when no one dared to 
question the utterances from the pulpit, when no one, in fact, 
was disposed or even thought to do so ; when everything that 
the minister said was believed as a matter of course, for he was 
regarded as a kind of demigod. And this has been almost the 
only kind of religious belief that has existed in the ages past. 
This is the case now in the papal church ; it is less so in the 
protestant church ; and it still lingers even among those pro- 
fessing to be of the New Church. Is any one's mind, indeed, 
free from it ? Is not the faith of each one of us resting, in 
part, at least, on what we regard as authority, — that is to say, 
on some verbal expression of truth, rather than on truth itself? 
Is not this still, to some extent, the tendency of our own mind ? 



CHRIST AND SWEDENBORG. 193 

Are not all more or less inclined to rest in the authoritative 
statements of Sweclenborg, or of those in whom they have 
confidence, without applying the test of their own rational 
thought? This is to have other masters than Christ. But 
this kind of faith, and this quality of mind must pass away ; 
they are not of the New Jerusalem ; they must pass away as 
the characteristics of youth pass away on advancing into man- 
hood. This was not the character of Swedenborg's mind, 
which, at the same time that it was the harbinger and the 
herald, was also the grand exemplar of the real genius of the 
descending New Jerusalem. He, looking to his one only 
Master for light and life, moulded his character, built the 
temple of his own manhood. He used authorities, all the 
great lights, all the learning of the world, but only as means ; 
he sifted and tried everything ; he winnowed out the chaff by 
means of the light flowing into rational thought, and used the 
wheat as the nourishment of that very thought. Truth, living 
truth, truth as living light, of which he believed the Word, 
or Christ in the Word, was the only source, was his master. 
And because such truth was his master — truth rationally seen 
— the pursuit of this opened new avenues of thought, and was 
constantly revealing new means of arriving at truth. Thus it 
was free, rational thought, prompted by love for the common 
good, that led him to Christ as his master, or, rather, that 
led him to shun evils as sins against the Lord, and to do His 
commandments, as the only way to his Master. It was this 
kind of life and discipline, and not mere intellectual training, 
that gave his mind such a high state of illuminated, rational 
thought, and made the letter of the Word transparent to him 
of its own Divine, spiritual light, for it opened his mind — just 
as similar life and discipline will open any mind — upward 
towards heaven, so that the Sun of heaven could shine into it 
and enlighten it ; in other words, so that Truth — Living Truth 
— could come in and make its abode in the mind. 

Swedenborg, as our brother, was simply a fellow branch of 



194 SWEDENBORG AND THE NEW AGE. 

the same vine. We are to receive from the same Source 
whence he received, and in a similar way. His writings and 
his example are simply instructive lessons to us, how we can 
come into co-ordinate states with his as branches of the same 
vine, or members of the same body. In the same sense the 
angels are our brethren. We are all branches of the same 
vine, all children bf the same Father, whose relation to us is 
as the vine to the branches. We may give each other knowl- 
edge, we may instruct each other in regard to the truth. But 
we cannot receive truth— that truth which is Master — from 
each other, any more than we can the sunlight, or any more 
than one branch can receive life from another branch, or than 
one member of the body can receive the influx of the heart 
or of the brain, which is as truth to the body, from another 
member. We can receive truth, which is the life of the soul, 
as the blood is of the body, from one only source, from one 
only Father who is in heaven, and who is the one only life 
and light. 

How plain it is, then, that we have no Rabbi but Christ ; 
that Swedenborg even in no sense stands between us and 
Christ, the Lord ; that his writings are in no sense the Word, 
or a substitute for the Word ; but that, on the contrary, his 
teachings and his example only show us into what form we 
must be moulded, in order that we may go ourselves directly 
to Christ as our Master ! 



CHAPTEK IX. 

AUTHORITY AND INFALLIBILITY. 

1. Different Kinds to Different States. 

Man had never before been capable of a rational under- 
standing of the Word. He knew nothing about it as " spirit 
and life," or " the spirit of truth ;" nor was he capable of 
knowing. But he was now becoming capable of understand- 
ing a rational explanation, or of understanding the " spiritual 
sense of the Word" in the sense of an explanation of that 
sense. Such explanation was all that was needed and all that 
could be given. It would have been of no use before, or it 
would have been given before. Blind obedience to verbal 
authority was all that the Israelite was capable of, and there- 
fore all that was required of him. The so-called Christian 
was only one step in advance of the Israelite. With such 
Chiistian the Bible meant just what it literally says ; and his 
reason, if he had any, must be suppressed while reading it. 
No verbal Scripture statement was to be questioned. The 
difference was, authority to the Israelite meant, " Thou shalt, 
or shalt not, do;" to the Christian, "Thou shalt believed 

But the time had now come, when man was coming into 
his full, rational manhood. He must now use his God-given 
reason in all that he read and in all that he did. But the 
Bible, as given to the Israelite, or as given to the Christian, as 
mere literal truth, would not bear the test of manhood reason. 
As read in the full exercise of unbiassed, rational thought, 
as the truly rational man must now read it, in the mere letter, 

195 



196 SWEDENBORG AND THE NEW AGE. 

it contains inconsistencies, contradictions, absurdities. And if 
the letter were all that there was of the Word, it must inevit- 
ably have been repudiated as the Word of God, and rejected. 
One was raised up, therefore, by the Lord, to show rationally 
and logically that the literal meaning was not all the meaning 
of Sacred Scripture ; to show that Sacred Scripture was only 
the Word finited, clothed, and accommodated to man in a very 
gross, "carnal-minded," " froward" state; and thus was raised 
up rationally to explain its real nature as " spirit and life." It 
is plain that such explanation, to be adapted to the man of the 
Age, must be given by a man of the Age. For the Word 
was to be hereafter — different from what it had been hereto- 
fore — authority to each man as he should himself rationally 
see and understand it, and not as somebody else said it meant. 
Its authority, therefore, must not be in the man explaining it, 
in reverence for his learning, his wisdom, his integrity, nor in 
any external evidence, even if there were any, that " the Lord 
explained it;" but its authority must be in what each one 
should see, see for himself, IN the explanation. I mean that, to 
the man of this new age, all the elements of conviction must 
be in the very nature of the explanation itself; and that, there- 
fore, the explanation must come through a man of the Age, 
through a man who was in the very light itself of that spirit- 
ual sense, — spiritual sense in the sense of Spirit of Truth, — 
which it was his mission to explain, at the same time that he 
possessed all other requisite qualifications. I mean that the 
explanations of the spiritual sense of the Word were to be, on 
account of the peculiar genius of the coming man, in the 
highest degree, rational ; and hence Swedenborg's most pecu- 
liarly rational qualifications. For they were to satisfy rational 
want, rational inquiry ; they were to help men, not merely to 
know, but to see ; and in this, in their helping men to see, con- 
sists all their power and all their authority. Swedenborg, 
therefore, enforces his teachings with no other kind of author- 
ity than that of an appeal to man's rational convictions. It 



AUTHORITY AND INFALLIBILITY. 197 

is not to be, I insist, with the coming man, as with the past, 
"thus saith the Lord," and you must, therefore, submit with- 
out rational thought or question. The Lord is to speak to the 
coming man, not as verbal truth speaks, but as the " Spirit of 
Truth" speaks, — which is the Lord — the Lord as the Word — 
coming " in His glory," and so coming because coming as the 
glorious, bright shining of truth in the mind, instead of in 
verbal statements of truth outside the mind. It was thus in 
His glory, as the Spirit of Truth, that He came to Sweden- 
borg, the forerunner, herald, and great exemplar of the coming 
man. The man of this New Age is going to believe, on ac- 
count of what he rationally sees, on account of the things 
revealed to his rational convictions, and not on account of 
what he is authoritatively told, or of his confidence in the 
medium through whom the revelation comes. Christ, Christ 
in His advent as the " Spirit of Truth," is to be his only 
Master. It will be impossible for him to believe on any other 
ground, or in any other authority. He is going to respect any 
revealer, therefore, — revealer in the sense of explainer, — only 
as he learns to do so through his respect for the revealed. 

The reverse has been the case, but because of as yet imma- 
ture, undeveloped manhood. This is the secret of the peculiar 
nature of Swedenborg's qualifications. He is to be judged ac- 
cording to the character of his message, and as this produces 
rational conviction, and not according to his authority as a 
messenger. In this some have entirely mistaken the nature of 
the authority of Swedenborg's writings, as well as the real na- 
ture of the coming man for whom he wrote. The truth that 
makes free is, to the coming man, the truth that speaks in him 
and not outside of him. Thus his authority is the Lord as he 
himself sees Him in such truth, and not as somebody else sees 
Him ; thus is the Word as he rationally understands it, with 
such helps as he can get, and not as any language, human or 
divine, authoritatively says it means. And this is the only 
kind of authority legitimately existing in the New Church. 



198 SWEDENBORG AND THE NEW AGE. 

The point is right here : to men in an external or merely 
representative state of mind the mere words or representative 
forms of truth must be authority ; for this is all they can see ; 
they cannot understand and therefore respect any other kind of 
authority. And this must be substantiated as divine authority 
by seemingly mysterious and incomprehensible demonstrations 
of power. To such men the mere Incarnation itself, the hu- 
manity assumed by the Lord, the finite, maternal part of the 
" God with us," is all that is cognizable. The Christian world, 
to this day, have had no true idea of what it really is that 
makes Christ God. But is such to be the nature of the au- 
thority to the real New Jerusalem ? Is it to be, in any sense 
or manner, " thus saith Swedenborg," or " thus saith the Writ- 
ings ?" Are not the Writings, on the contrary, designed and 
calculated, as we come to fully understand and imbibe their 
true spirit, to lead us from the representative to the real or 
represented Master, the real truth, the " Comforter," or Spirit 
of Truth ? Are they not calculated to free us from old exter- 
nal ideas of mere representative, verbal authority, and to lead 
us into states of perception and acknowledgment of the Spirit 
of Truth as authority, and truth as each for himself sees it, 
and not as Swedenborg or some one else, in words, states it to 
him? How can men, really belonging to this New Jerusalem 
Age, if they possess, even measurably, its spirit, waste their 
time and talents in attempts to prove or disprove this thing or 
that thing from any verbal statements of truth, which at best 
can be but mere shadows, as it were, of truth, even if we grant 
— as we do — that they are in no way shadows distorted by the 
medium through which they came? It is not a matter worth 
discussing, whether Swedenborg's writings are fallible or infal- 
lible, and it is not anything of the true genius and spirit of the 
Age that has suggested the question. Yet one thing we may 
be assured of, and that is, if we are really at war with ourselves, 
if we are living the life of the New Jerusalem, and thus are 
coming into its true order and under its true authority, we 



AUTHORITY AND INFALLIBILITY. 199 

shall see ourselves so plainly, we shall be so painfully conscious 
of our imperfections and blindness, that we shall go to the 
Writings in humility, and in undoubting faith in everything 
essential as regards their accuracy as verbal teachings. We 
shall not, indeed, question, or be disposed to question, Sweden- 
borg's teachings ; we should regard it as presumption in our- 
selves to do so, and as evidence of our own blindness. For we 
know, we are all convinced that his statements were made with 
the Lord — the Lord as the Spirit of Truth — visibly present ; 
that is to say, with the Lord as the Word livingly shining in 
and illuminating his mind. To question the verbal accuracy 
of Swedenborg's explanations, when we have acknowledged 
his high mission and his wonderful qualifications for it, be* 
cause of some imagined discrepancies, or for any other cause, 
would be only less presumptuous than it would be for a man, 
ignorant of all but the external form and members of the 
body, to question a learned anatomist's description of its inter- 
nal mechanism. We only disclaim Swedenborg's writings as 
authority in any such sense as that in which Sacred Scripture, 
in its mere letter, is authority to an external or representative 
church. We maintain that any authority claimed for them 
like that of the Sacred Scriptures is a misunderstanding and 
perversion of their real design and use, and a misconception of 
the real character of the age and of the wants of the age for 
which Swedenborg wrote. Such false claim for the Writings 
is one in character with the empty rituals and ecclesiastic-isms 
of the past, which, though indispensable and useful to man in 
a low, sensuous state, are, nevertheless, nothing more than the 
old fig-leaf aprons extended over the shame of degenerate gen- 
erations, or to hide, or serve as a substitute for, the want of 
real life of an external church. The tendency of such a claim, 
like all rituals observed as rituals, is to hold the mind down in 
mere externals. The Writings, on the contrary, virtually say 
in their spirit, " hold yourself in no such bondage to any ex- 
ternal statements of truth ;" but, " arise, shine ; for thy light is 



200 SWEDENBORG AND THE NEW AGE. 

come, and the glory of the Lord" — that is to say, the glory of 
the real Word — " is risen upon thee." The Lord is in His 
second or real, full coming; in His coming to an internal 
church ; in His coming, therefore, as real, not verbal, truth ; 
that is to say, as the Spirit of Truth, by immediate influx into 
the mind with power, therefore, and great glory. 

2. "Authority in the New Church." 

Authority in the New Church ! What is it ? According 
to the tone and drift of thought of some writers, authority in 
the New Church seems too much like that of another papal 
hierarchy. We are told, for example, that " the doctrines of 
the New Church are to be believed first, and afterwards to be 
confirmed by rational considerations." The Catholic Bishop, 
Ryan, in a lecture on " what Catholics do not believe," says : 

" They have first convinced themselves that the church to 
which they pay allegiance ... is an unerring messenger of 
God to them ; therefore, if they submit to a decision of the 
Church, they submit to the decision of a tribunal which their 
own reason has already accepted as an unerring tribunal." 

But how, in the full exercise of their reason, could they 
have first convinced themselves that any human institution 
was unerring? and especially how could they now do it in the 
light of the fearful history of such institution ? The Catholic 
is evidently convinced, — if it may be called conviction, — on 
simple authority, that the church is infallible ; and on simple 
authority he believes her decrees. Reason, the distinctive at- 
tribute of his race, — that which makes him a man, — has 
nothing to do with either his conviction in the one case, or his 
belief in the other. He is a mere animal ; authority does it 
all. The authority of the church says that the church is un- 
erring, and the church's infallibility is authority for faith in 
her. 



AUTHORITY AND INFALLIBILITY. 201 

3. " To be Believed First." 

So this new theory of the Writings as " the Lord's writings," 
says, " The doctrines are to be believed first, and afterwards 
to be confirmed by rational considerations." But on what 
grounds believed first ? The man of true manhood of the New 
Church must, as an imperative necessity, have some rational 
grounds for his belief. In this he is different from the man 
of any previous church age. If Swedenborg teaches that a 
man must believe before the exercise of " rational consider- 
ations," it is sufficient cause for the rejection of his writings as 
unworthy of confidence. The man of this age is not a true 
man of the age, if he can have confidence in any such teach- 
ings. But Swedenborg nowhere teaches such absurdities. 
The very passages from " True Christian Religion" and " Ar- 
cana Coelestia" cited in confirmation of the above remarkable 
statement, are distorted from their true meaning. They mean 
exactly the opposite. The following is in ore of the passages 
cited from T. C. R. 508, — which is enough for all, — namely : 

" The Word with the Roman Catholics was taken away from 
the laity, and with the Protestants it is open, but still shut by 
their common saying that the understanding is to be kept 
under obedience to their faith. But in the New Church it is 
reversed; in her it is lawful by the understanding to enter and 
penetrate into all the secrets of it, and also to confirm them by 
the Word ; the reason is, because its doctrinals are truths con- 
tinuous from the Lord, laid open by the Word ; and confirm- 
ations of them by rational things cause the understanding to 
be opened above more and more, and thus to be elevated into 
the light in which the angels are." 

If, as is claimed by some, the Writings are infallible, — and 
the true man of this age will not waste a thought on the ques- 
tion whether they are or not, — a man must in some way — 
and it is not shown how — be convinced of it, it seems, — just 
as the papist, in some way, has to be convinced of the infalli- 



202 SWEDENBORO AND THE NEW AGE. 

bility of his church, — before he can be permitted to exercise 
" rational considerations." And here is the difference between 
the papist and those who regard the Writings as " the Lord's 
writings," and, therefore, infallible : the former pretends, at 
least, to allow you the use of your reason in becoming con- 
vinced of the infallibility of the church, whilst the latter seem 
to recognize no such preliminary condition of belief as neces- 
sary as regards the doctrines of the New Church. These doc- 
trines must be believed first, simply because they are " contin- 
uous truths from the Lord," and thus the Lord's teachings. 
How do we know that they are such truths ? How can we 
know without the exercise, first, of "rational considerations?" 
The New Church mind cannot take this for granted, on blind 
authority, as the Catholic mind can the infallibility of his 
church ; if it can, then it is not New Church mind. It is of 
no avail to say that this declaration is in the Writings and 
that the Writings are the Lord's. How do we know that they 
are the Lord's writings ? They who have come to this conclu- 
sion, have evidently done so on their own principles, namely, 
that certain things " must be believed first, and afterwards 
confirmed by rational considerations ;" for people who believe 
first on " rational considerations," are very far from coming to 
their conclusions. 

4. Misinterpreted Statements. 

If there is anything taught in the Writings more clearly 
than anything else, it is that the man of the New Church is a 
rational man ; that there is, indeed, no real manhood without 
rationality ; that there is, in fact, no genuine manhood act, 
thought, affection, or motive, or desire even, and thus no be- 
lief without reason as a prime constituent element. When 
the general statement, therefore, is made, on the authority of 
Swedenborg, " that the affirmation of what is Divine, and thus 
the acknowledgment of what is Divine as authority, must come 
first, and rational thought afterwards," we are compelled to 



AUTHORITY AND INFALLIBILITY. 203 

doubt the correctness of the understanding of Swedenborg, 
and even though the statement be seemingly substantiated by 
the language of Swedenborg. We will not believe that Swed- 
enborg is inconsistent with himself, as we should be forced to 
do, if we took all his readers' representations of him as cor- 
rect, or all their quotations from him as representing him truly. 
And as regards citations from Swedenborg, a great mistake 
is made in taking certain special statements as general state- 
ments, and without regard to the suhject treated of. For ex- 
ample, Swedenborg is represented as making the general state- 
ment (A. C. 3388), that " the acknowledgment of what is 
Divine is the first thing, for then an idea of holiness is present, 
which gives universal confirmation to each and every thing 
that is said, even though it he not comprehended." 

Now let us look at the context of this statement. Just 
before it, we read : " It is treated concerning those who are in 
the doctrinals of faith, and have no perception of truth from 
good, but only a conscience of truth from this, that it has been 
so told them by parents and masters. . . . With such persons, 
the first of confirmation of truth is, that it is called Divine [illis 
primum confirmations vert est, quod Divinum dicatur']." It 
is plain from the Latin even, aside from the context, that 
Swedenborg does not make the general statement that " the 
acknowledgment of what is Divine is the first thing." On 
the contrary, it is " with such persons" [the peculiar class he 
is treating of] that " the first of confirmation of truth is, that 
it is called Divine," and why ? Swedenborg then adds : " for 
then they have instantly an idea of what is holy, which gives 
universal confirmation to all and each of the things that are 
said, and this though they do not comprehend it. But still the 
things said must be adequate to their comprehension [they must 
have some rational perception of it] ; for it is not enough that 
a man knows that a thing is ; he wants to know what it is, and 
how it is or what is its quality, so that some confirmation may 
accrue thence to his intellectual part, and in turn from that ; 



204 SWEDENBORG AND THE NEW AGE. 

otherwise, a thing may, indeed, be committed to the memory, 
hut it remains there not other than a dead thing as if a thing 
of sound; and unless some confirming things infix it, from 
whatever source derived, it is dissipated like the reminiscence 
of something only sounding." 

Take another example of the wrong use of special state- 
ments as general ones in support of the position of belief first 
and rational confirmation afterwards. The following has been 
cited for such a purpose, from A. C. 1911 : 

" Intellectual truth does not appear, i.e., is not acknowledged, 
until fallacies and appearances are dispersed ; and these are 
not dispersed so long as man reasons concerning truths them- 
selves from sensual and scientific tilings ; but it then first ap- 
pears when a man believes from a simple beart that it is truth, 
because the Lord has spoken it : then the shades of fallacies 
are dispersed ; and then it matters not to him that he does not 
comprehend it." 

In order to understand the real significance of this extract, 
we must ascertain the subject of the paragraph whence it is 
taken ; and the subject is the relation of the " rational first 
conceived" to "truth intellectual or spiritual." Such rational 
cannot acknowledge such truth as truth, " because there ad- 
here to it many fallacies originating in sciences received from 
the world and from nature, also appearances derived from 
knowledges collected from the literal sense of the Word, which 
are not truths. As, for example, it is an intellectual truth, 
that all life is from the Lord; but the rational first conceived 
does not comprehend this truth. ... It is an intellectual 
truth that all good and truth are from the Lord ; but neither 
does the rational first conceived comprehend this, because it 
appears to sense as if good and truth were from self," etc. 

Several other examples are given of similar import in the 
same number. But Swedenborg does not speak of this as a 
fault of this "first conceived" rational, but as being all that 
the mind, in this particular stage of development, is capable 



AUTHORITY AND INFALLIBILITY. 205 

of. For the case was precisely similar with the Lord, with 
whom, though there were no fallacies, yet, " when His rational 
was first conceived, there were appearances of truth, which 
were not in themselves truths. . . . Hence also His rational, at 
its first conception, like man's, lightly esteemed intellectual 
truth." But with Him and with man, the clouds of appeai-- 
ances were dispersed in the regular order of progress to higher 
states. The necessity of this order some men fail to recog- 
nize, and it seems that they would have a man begin with a 
state, which, from the very nature of the case, must come at a 
later stage in the work of regeneration, and as the fruit of 
several preceding states. 

Man cannot believe, " from a simple heart," etc., until he 
lias a " simpie heart;" he can so believe only when his state 
is ripe for such belief; only when, like the tree in preparation 
for fruit-bearing, he has passed through certain preparatory 
states. Swedenborg recognizes at least two distinct states of 
progress as preparatory to that in which " fallacies and appear- 
ances are dispersed," and " intellectual or spiritual truth ap- 
pears, i.e., is acknowledged." He says the "progression is 
from scientifics to rational truths ; next, to intellectual truths ; 
and, lastly, to celestial truths." " Scientific truth is of science ; 
rational truth is scientific truth confirmed by reason ; intellec- 
tual truth is joined with an internal perception that it is so." 
A. C. 1495-96. This is the order of progression. It was so 
with the Lord. And every state must come in its order. Sci- 
entifics and sensuals must have their day ; but when they have 
done their work, the mind parts with the fallacies and appear- 
ances connected with them, as the tree parts with its blossoms 
when the prolific principle of the pollen is matured and the 
germ is fertilized. But though a man may have passed through 
the first two states, he never can come into the third, or that 
of intellectual truth, or of faith, and an acknowledgment of 
what is Divine, unless he is fighting against his sins, and thus 
is being regenerated. Thus it is not until a man has pro- 



206 SWEDENBORG AND THE NEW AGE. 



to the third state, or a state of "intellectual truth," 
that he can " believe first, and afterwards confirm his belief by 
rational considerations." And he can do so then only because 
he has, as a result of prior experiences, an " internal percep- 
tion that it is so." 

5. A State of " Intellectual Truth." 

And when a man has arrived at a state of " intellectual 
truth," "joined with an internal perception that it is so," what 
is his authority? what is his "Rabbi," or "Master?" Is it 
any writing, any verbal statement of truth or doctrine ? is it 
doctrine as formulated and expressed in human language ? is 
it truth finited and coming to him through the medium of 
another mind ? is it what any finite being tells him is truth, 
or is the Lord ? No, never, never, never ! But before a man 
comes to that state of " intellectual truth," he must take such 
verbal information as authority as he is best capable of. But 
all such information is, at best, exceedingly imperfect ; for it 
means one thing, or another thing, exactly according to the 
state of the recipient of it. There is no such thing as an 
infallible, finite medium of truth or doctrine. The mere letter 
of the Word, though spoken by the Lord, is not so. It is 
constantly a question with every one, while passing through 
the preliminary, sensuous, scientific, and " first conceived" ra- 
tional states, — before he has arrived at a state of " perception," 
— what does this mean ? What seems perfectly transparent of 
truth at one time, or to one person, is full of obscurity and 
doubt at another time, or to another person. But when he has 
arrived at that state of " intellectual truth," in which he has 
a " perception that it is so," the doubts, the fallacies, and ap- 
pearances of preceding states flee away, as birds of Dight before 
the day. 

And then, when a man has come into this state of percep- 
tion, he no longer remains in doctrinals. A. C. 6043. What 
does he care for doctrinals, that is, for verbal statements of 



AUTHORITY AND INFALLIBILITY. 207 

doctrine, and even though such statements be perfect ? He 
now has an " authority," a " Master," even Christ, the Word, 
that is, the very " Spirit of Truth" itself, which is to him 
absolutely unerring. He has now actually come in sight of 
the Holy City, and is in its light. He now sees where the city 
is, and what it is, for it is in his heart, — sees its golden streets 
and pearly gates, of which he had before heard and learned so 
much, through doctrinals or verbal statements about them, — 
sees them now actually shining in the bright sunlight. And 
now what becomes of all the misunderstood, and thus erring 
guides to the city ? That is, what becomes of the sensuous, 
scientific, or purely rational information that he has had about 
the city ? Is he any longer necessarily, or in any such way as 
formerly, a subject of instruction through human language, 
and by any formulated statements of doctrine ? He now sees 
like the blind with sight restored. He does not need to be led 
by any sensuous or " rational considerations." He has out- 
grown all such means. All such things are therefore now dis- 
persed, or are used only as confirmations; otherwise they would 
blind him. For him now to rely on " rational considerations" 
for his belief, would be as if a traveller, after he had come in 
sight of the city, should rely on verbal directions to it, instead 
of his own now clear vision of the way to it. Sensuals, sci- 
entifics, and reasonings are indispensable up to a certain point 
in the journey of life, — they must, indeed, lead, up to that 
point; but, after arrival at that point, they necessarily and nat- 
urally take a subordinate position, and all that is fallacious 
about them is seen and abandoned. When a man comes into 
a state to perceive truth as it flows into the mind " continuously 
from the Lord," to believe such truth then from what is sen- 
sual, scientific, and rational, is to make it a nullity. This is 
clearly shown in " Arcana Coelestia," 2538, in which and the 
preceding numbers Swedenborg is treating of doctrine, which 
he says, in 2516, is " from the essential Divine and the Divine 
Human of the Lord ; this is its origin, and, indeed, insomuch 



208 SWEDENBORG AND THE NEW AGE. 

that the Lord is doctrine itself, and therefore in the Word is 
called the Word, the Truth, the Way, the Light, the Door." 
Swedenborg is evidently not speaking of doctrinals here, or of 
statements of doctrine, but of that substantial entity which 
the man in "intellectual truth" "perceives" as doctrine, and as 
doctrine as an interiorly illuminating principle. 



CHAPTER X. 

DOCTRINE AND THE HOLY CITY. 

1. Doctrine. 

Among other inferences drawn by some from T. C. R. 779, 
are the following, namely : first, " that the doctrines contained 
in the theological writings of Swedenborg are meant in the 
Apocalypse by ' the Holy City, New Jerusalem descending 
from God out of heaven ;' " and, second, " that the publica- 
tion of these writings in this world constitutes the Lord's 
Second Coming, which was promised in the letter of the 
Word." 

By another passage (" Coronis," Nos. 18 and 20) some think 
that " it is clearly proved that the New Jerusalem does not 
descend insensibly into the interiors of men, and hence does 
not transform them gradually by an interior process into the 
members of the New Jerusalem :" and why ? " for," it is added, 
" it is distinctly stated here that by the descent of the New 
Jerusalem is meant the descent of doctrine, and that by means 
of this doctrine the New Jerusalem is established upon earth." 

Now let us look at these statements. According to the 
above view, Doctrines are the Holy City, and the publication 
of them constitutes the Second Advent ; and this is not a pro- 
gressive work, is not a gradual transformation of men, but 
takes place " once for all." And yet in those very passages 
cited from the " Coronis," Swedenborg says that " the doctrine 
of the New Heaven is the doctrine of truth and good falling 
from heaven like the dew of twilight, by which the leaves of 
the grass are opened and their vegetative juice is sweetened. 
10* ' 209 



210 SWEDENBORG AND THE NEW AGE. 

This doctrine, also, is like the shower of rain, which refreshes 
the fruits of the field, and causes them to sprout : it is also 
like the fragrance exhaling from the fields, gardens, and flowery 
meadows, which is inhaled by the beast with an eager and glad 
spirit." The dew and the rain fall gradually, and their effect 
is a gradual one. And the fragrance also is a progressive 
effluence, and the beast inhales it by little and little, and is 
made glad by it. These are beautiful and most significant 
illustrations of doctrine in its descent and effects. 



2. Advent, Doctrine, and Holy City the 

The great confusion and inconsistency on this, as on other 
subjects, arises from persistently taking the mere verbal state- 
ment or explanation of a thing for the thing itself. If Swe- 
denborg's writings, yea, the very books themselves, constitute 
the Second Advent, then they constitute the Doctrines of the 
New Jerusalem, and constitute also the New Jerusalem itself; 
for these three, as acknowledged by all, and as Swedenborg 
teaches, are one and the same, — are so in their real meaning, 
or when we come to know what is really meant by the Lord's 
Advent, by Doctrine, and by the New Jerusalem. 

Nothing is more plainly taught in the Writings, than that 
the Lord's Advent is an influx and perception of Divine 
Truth, and also that such Truth is what is meant by " Doctrine 
continuous from the Lord ;" and thus that such Doctrine is the 
Lord; and that when received and talcing effect in men, such 
Doctrine is really the New Jerusalem. And that all this is a 
"perception" an internal inspiration, or illustration, will appear 
plain, when we consider that there has been no change in the 
Lord, none whatever, as the Cause of these results. There 
has been no absolutely new or different influx of Divine Truth 
from the Lord ;. neither has it been different in its operation so 
far as the Lord's absolute agency is concerned. The Lord, as 
the same Divine Truth, has always flowed into man, and un- 
remittingly so. The change, all that has ever taken place, has 



DOCTRINE AND THE HOLY CITY. 211 

been in man, or has been a change induced by man's changed 
state, thus by changed receptive conditions. This change has 
simply enabled him to perceive what he never perceived before ; 
thus has enabled the Lord, as the very Life and Light, as the 
very " Spirit of Truth," of the Word, to manifest Himself to 
man as He never had done before. And how plain it is that 
the Lord as such influx of Divine Truth, is the " Doctrine of 
the New Jerusalem," or of that new phase of humanity which, 
for the first time in the history of man, has come into a state 
to be illuminated by such Divine Truth, or to have it shine in 
his mind ; and how plain that the New Jerusalem, itself is 
nothing else than the Lord, as such Truth, " coming," or as 
such doctrine, " descending," " from God out of heaven," into 
the life of men ! How plain all this is ; and how it lifts the 
clouds from a great many passages in the Sacred Scriptures, 
and in the Writings ! The real Advent is the perceived Influx 
of the Lord as Divine Truth; Doctrine is the same Influx in 
its instructing and illuminating efficacy ; the New Jerusalem 
is the same in its " descent" into the life, or in its progressive 
and effective operation in the life. Thus such Truth is the 
Lord coming in me, when I have come into a state to perceive 
His presence or the presence of such Truth in me, — which 
presence is, in itself, nothing new, but is new only in its new 
manifestation, or in my new perception of it ; for it is always 
in me, as my soul is always in my body ;. it is Doctrine when 
and because it illuminates me ; it is the New Jerusalem when 
and because it is in my life. 

3. Doctrine and Doctrinals. 

Swedenborg says : " The case with Doctrine is this : it is 
no doctrine just so far as it is believed to be doctrine, from 
anything human, that is. from anything sensual, scientific, and 
rational ; but so far as the sensual, scientific, and rational is re- 
moved, that is, so far as doctrine is believed without them, so 
far it lives, for so far the Divine flows in ; the thing proper to 



212 SWEDENBORQ AND THE NEW AGE. 

the human impedes influx and reception. But it is one thing 
to believe from the rational, scientific, and sensual, or to con- 
sult these in order to believe, and another thing to confirm and 
corroborate what is believed by rational, scientific, and sensual 
things." 

By Doctrine here — Doctrine that "lives" — is not meant 
" doctrinals," which " are nothing else than appearances of 
truth divine, or nothing else than spiritual and celestial vessels, 
in which is the divine." " All those things are called doc- 
trinals which are of doctrine, which, so far as they can be re- 
ceived and acknowledged in heaven by angels and on earth by 
men, are said to respect rationals, for it is the rational which 
receives and acknowledges them ; but the rational is such that 
it can in no wise comprehend things divine, inasmuch as it is 
finite, and this cannot comprehend the things which are of the 
Infinite ; therefore truths divine from the Lord are presented 
before the rational by appearances." A. C. 3365. 

Here we see the great difference between Doctrine and 
Doctrinals, the former being truth itself, truth in its essence, 
truth as an influx of living light " continuous from the 
Lord ;" the latter being only an " appearance of truth," or the 
verbal vessel or medium of truth, i.e., containing things or 
clothed with " things proper to the human which impede in- 
flux," etc. The former is for the New Church, the latter is 
all that the Old has ever been capable of. Strictly speaking, 
Swedenborg's writings contain only " doctrinals," real doctrine 
not being expressible in verbal statements, or in what is " proper 
to the human ;" for, when so expressed, it becomes doctrinals, 
thus only " appearances" or " vessels" of truth or of doctrine. 
It may be said of doctrine — thus defined — that it must be 
" believed first and afterwards confirmed by rational considera- 
tions ;" and why ? Because such doctrine cannot be seen as 
the result of any learning however great, or of any process of 
reasoning however acute, but only as the result of a certain 
degree of progress in regeneration ; and it must be seen before 



DOCTRINE AND THE HOLY CITY. 213 

it can be believed ; from the very effect of its influx into the 
mind it must be " perceived that it is so." But before a man, 
through a proper use of sensual, scientific, and rational things, 
arrives at this state, he can no more believe than a man without 
eyes can believe in the sunlight, or without ears can believe 
in sound, except on external authority, which is not the belief 
of the New Church. 

But belief in doctrinals, or in verbal statements of doctrine, 
is a very different matter, — and these seem to be all that some 
writers mean when they speak of the " doctrines of the New 
Church ;" they evidently mean the Writings, or the doctrines 
as revealed in the form of teachings or doctrinals. And belief 
in these requires a very different exercise of human faculty 
from that required in belief in doctrine as just explained. A 
man can believe in doctrinals, or things that are told him, thus 
things outside of him and of which he has no internal vision 
or " perception that it is so," only as he sees convincing evi- 
dence of their truth. And this evidence must be founded on 
" rational considerations." This is a state preceding that of 
" intellectual truth," when such considerations would be only 
as clouds before the sight. He must weigh doctrinals, must 
turn them over, analyze them, and test them in the light, not 
of perception, — he has not arrived at that state yet, — but of 
such " rational considerations" as he is now capable of. Whether 
he can believe them must depend upon how they bear the test 
of such " considerations ;" for either they or the opinions of 
men are, as yet, his only authority, unless he has been educated 
into a sort of belief in the Scriptures. But if he is really, in 
the character of his mind, a partaker of the genius of the New 
Church, he cannot regard the opinions of men as authority ; 
but he may, from evidence in themselves, and from an influence 
which he feels from them when he devoutly reads them, be 
convinced of the truth of the Scriptures. They, in this case, 
become his authority, but as interpreted, not to another's but 
to his own rational convictions. If he is asked now to believe 



214 SWEDENBORG AND THE NEW AGE. 

certain doctrinals, he can really do it, only as they accord, not 
with his " perception that it is so," for he has none, hut with 
his own rational understanding of the Scriptures. 

4. This and Preceding Ages. 

And this is the vast difference between this age, this New 
Jerusalem phase of developing humanity, and all preceding 
ages or phases, "nunc licet." Now it is permitted; before it 
was not permitted ; that is to say, now it is lawful — for now it 
is possible — to enter intellectually into the mysteries of faith ; 
before, humanity was incapable of it. In the age of the Is- 
raelitish church there was no faith but of the most external 
kind, and on the most external of external authority ; it was a 
belief in which even scientific and rational considerations had 
nothing to do ; it was purely sensuous. The man of the first 
Christian church age has not been capable of a faith founded 
on anything higher than that of " signs and wonders" and his 
own reasonings. And these last even have not been permitted. 
He has been required to believe unconditionally and without 
the exercise of a particle of " real" intellectuality. But in 
this age it is different, and different because the capabilities of 
humanity are different, and different in a sense similar to that 
in which the capabilities of manhood are different from those 
of childhood or youthhood. Man is now capable of the true 
light in regard to regeneration, and thus of true regeneration, 
as he has not been before. In the Old church, regeneration 
is a miraculous and instantaneous change by an arbitrary divine 
act. which is not regeneration at all, which does not, therefore, 
open the mind to the " living light," and thus does not enable 
it to " enter intellectually into the secrets of faith." It is law- 
ful now for a man to know what he believes and why he be- 
lieves, for he is now capable of a real belief, and he is just so 
far incapable of a blind belief; for he can now, as he rises by 
regeneration into his real manhood, intellectually see — " per- 
ceive that it is so" — as he never could before. He acknowl- 



DOCTRINE AND THE HOLY CITY. 215 

edges no authority, therefore, and needs acknowledge none, — 
no doctrinals, no finited teachings, no formulated statements of 
truth, — no authority but Christ the Lord, the Word, the Truth, 
— none but Divine Truth, that is to say, as he 'perceives it as 
an illuminating influx into his own mind. The doctrinals of 
this age, of this peculiar phase of humanity, are vessels, or are 
the external formulated expressions of real doctrine, that is to 
say, of " truth continuous from the Lord laid open by the 
Word," whose " truths, one and all, are so many mirrors of the 
Lord." 

The Doctrinals of the Israelitish age — of a man in a blind, 
sensuous, youthhood state — must necessarily have been — to 
have any influence — the blind doctrinals of " thus saith the 
Lord." But the Israelite was not required to believe them ; 
was not capable, indeed, of exercising any rational thought or 
question about them ; but he was required to obey them, and to 
obey them because " thus saith the Lord ;" and he was goaded 
to obedience by threatened consequences if he did not obey. 
The man of the first Christian Church Age was a step in ad- 
vance of the Israelite. The true man of that age has exer- 
cised his rational faculties in regard to the real nature of what 
the Lord said, has claimed the right to rationally see and un- 
derstand what the Lord required of him before obeying or be- 
lieving even. Paul may perhaps be regarded as a remarkable 
exemplar of this kind of man. Entirely different from the Is- 
raelite, he was a reasoner. This was as far as the man of that 
peculiar phase of humanity could go. He could believe and 
obey only on rational evidence, " rational considerations." His 
mind was not open so that he could " see the Lord," so that he 
could perceive, that is to say, " living doctrine" — "truth con- 
tinuous from the Lord." The papist who takes as authority 
" thus saith the church," as a thus saith the Lord, though in 
another form, is practically still only an Israelite. The New- 
churchman who adopts the view of the Writings as "the 
Lord's writings" is qualifiedly the same. For such views, so 



216 SWEDENBORG AND THE NEW AGE. 

far as they have any practical influence, tend to carry the 
manhood of this new age back to the darkest of all the dark 
ages. There seems to be a labored effort to prove, we regret 
to say, that Swedenborg's writings — being, as it is claimed, the 
Lord's writings, thus the " Word without the literal sense," 
thus the Lord, — the " Lord in His Advent," thus, the " Thus 
saith the Lord" — are authority to the man of this age, in a 
sense similar to that in which the Scriptures were authority to 
the Israelite, and the " Church" to the papist. The radical dif- 
ference of the manhood of this age from that of the past ages, 
which is as great as is that of individual manhood from child- 
hood, seems to be entirely ignored. If it could be fairly proved 
from Swedenborg's writings that he makes any such claim for 
them, it would simply be proved to the truly rational man that 
his writings were utterly unworthy of himself, and unworthy of 
the noble, Godlike manhood of the Age for which they were 
given. The philosophy both of his life, that is to say, of his 
own developing manhood, and of his teachings, is a contra- 
diction to such a claim. Swedenborg's writings are for the 
use of the New Jerusalem. And truth to the New Jerusa- 
lem is not to come, as to the dark-minded Israelite or papist, 
in the form of " thus saith the Lord," or thus saith the church, 
but in the form of an inspiration, of an internally illuminating 
influx. 

5. Swedenborg and the New Manhood. 

Swedenborg's life, at the same time that it is the grandest 
exemplification of true, Godlike manhood that the world has 
probably ever seen, is also the grandest exemplification of the 
way of attaining to such manhood. His journey of life, as 
every other man's must be, was through every phase of de- 
veloping humanity. He passed over every plane, through the 
instructive and disciplinary experiences of every degree of 
life. While on the animal and sensuous plane, he was an ani- 
mal and sensuous being, — an infant when an infant, a child 
when a child, and a youth when a youth. At each period his 



DOCTRINE AND THE HOLY CITY. 217 

mind fed upon and was exercised by what belonged to that 
period, as should be the case with all other minds. He passed 
through the several states in which '• sensuals," " scientifics," and 
" rationals" successively had their day, and their work to do. He 
garnered a grand store-house of each, and to subserve higher 
ends as he came successively, by their use as means, into 
higher states. He never ignored any of them, but gave each 
its place and its day of rule. Each was to him successively his 
authority, his object of belief, and trust and guide. He bowed 
to " sensuals" when on the mere sensuous plane ; but as modi- 
fied, of course, by instruction from his superiors, and by the 
Sacred Scriptures, which were his constant study. He in like 
manner bowed to " scientifics" while on the scientific plane, 
and to "rationals" while on the rational plane. Like all others, 
he had to think and live and act according to what he was and 
had, in the phase through which he was at the time passing, 
and not according to what he was not and had not, but was 
only preparing to be and to have. He did not " believe," be- 
lieve, I mean, in the higher, true sense of the word, — believe 
as it is the exclusive and peculiar prerogative of the man of 
the New Jerusalem to believe, — until all the prior states had 
ripened him for that state, and he could so believe. He then 
" believed," but not because he persuaded himself that he 
ought to, but because that was the next faculty opened, and he 
could not help it, — could not help it any more than the tree 
can help putting forth leaves when its state for that phase of 
development has come. He believed when and because he 
was in a state to " perceive that it was so." And did he now 
make the same use of sensuals, scientifics, and rationals that 
he had done before ? By no means. This would have blinded 
him. On the contrary, he now used them only to confirm 
belief, not, as formerly, as grounds of belief. Their use, once 
a dominant one, is now a. subordinate one. 

How singularly all this is exemplified and confirmed in Swe- 
denborg's writings ! What stores he had gathered in of " sen- 



218 SWEDENBORG AND THE NEW AGE. 

suals," and " scientifics," and " rationals," up to a certain period 
of his life, up to the time when, from a state of " intellectual 
truth," he was " illuminated," or " internally inspired," so that 
he had a " perception that it was so !" He then saw, and he 
used rationals and scientifics only to confirm what he saw, — 
they were the " borrowed vessels of silver, and vessels of gold 
and raiment" which he took with him when he " went up out 
of Egypt." He wrote in the very light itself of heaven,— 
thus as " instructed by the Lord alone," — and used what he 
had before acquired, both of learning and of development, only 
as means, only as instruments and recipient vessels. His 
writings are most peculiarly an appeal to the rational mind, to 
those who are passing through the necessary states of prepa- 
ration, who are forming the good ground which renders real 
belief possible. For there must, from the very nature of the 
case, be rational belief before there can possibly be belief from 
perception. The Writings give none but rational light, rational 
evidence, that is. the light of rational formularies or expres- 
sions of truth, and not the light of absolute truth itself, not 
the light of " revelation from perception," or " internal inspi- 
ration." 

6. The Writings an Appeal to Rational Minds. 

Swedenborg's writings, therefore, it is plain, are only rational 
aids to states of mind such as he himself passed through, which 
are preliminary to states of enlightenment by real truth, and 
thus preliminary to that state of perception which is attended 
by genuine faith. Different from the Word, they give no other 
light than rational light, and they are authority only on the 
plane of reason. We cannot, therefore, possibly believe them 
on other than rational grounds, for they are not " doctrine 
that lives ;" they are not the New Jerusalem as real doctrine 
is when it descends into life, when it flows into men as the 
life of the vine into the branches ; they are not the Lord in 
His Advent, as the perception of such doctrine is j they are 



DOCTRINE AND THE HOLY CITY. 219 

not the " continent" of the living Word, as Sacred Scripture is. 
But they are of priceless value as " explanations," or as finited 
and formulated revelations of all these, as furnishing, indeed, 
the rational substratum of genuine belief. They show us, in 
fact, how we must live, and the real nature of the successive 
states through which we must pass, and the absolute necessity 
of those states, before it will be possible for us to be in a state 
of "perception" and thus in a state to truly believe. They 
show the real nature and significance, and relation to the others, 
of each state through which we have to pass, — of the " state 
of sensuals," of the "state of scientifics," and of the " state of 
rationals ;" and they show us, with most convincing evidence, 
that the state in which it will be possible for us to believe can- 
not be reached but as the result of the work done in these 
preceding states. They show us that there is order, and that 
there are series and degrees in everything, and that everything 
must come in its order ; that the " full corn in the ear" cannot 
come before the " ear," nor the ear before the " blade ;" for 
the full corn is evolved from the ear, and the ear from or after 
the blade. So a " state of scientifics" is evolved, so to speak, 
from a " state of sensuals ;" a " state of rationals" from a " state 
of scientifics ;" and a " state of perception," and thus of belief, 
from a state of regenerated rationals. 

It is an important fact, and one of significant bearing upon 
this subject, that man's normal relation to Grod is that of per- 
ception, and thus belief. The New Jerusalem is man's return 
to that relation, but with all the difference in kind and degree 
that there is between any state of adult age and a correspond- 
ing state of uncontaminated infancy or childhood. In both of 
these states there is no authority or " Master" but Christ the 
Lord as an influx of Divine Truth, — Truth that actually shines 
in and thus illuminates the mind. All other appliances of 
truth, such as formulated statements, or finited expressions of 
truth, have been made necessary only because of man's way- 
wardness, and consequent blindness to real truth, while passing 



220 SWEDENBORG AND THE NEW AGE. 

through the intervening states ; have heen, as it were, an expe- 
dient growing out of certain darkened conditions of mind. 
As man, therefore, comes up out of those conditions, — as the 
real man of the New Jerusalem must do, — he outgrows that 
kind of authority. Think, then, of keeping man, in all time 
to come, under the leading-strings of verbal statements of truth, 
— as it is the tendency of a belief in the Writings as the 
Lord's writings to do, — and even though we admit — which we 
do not — that such statements were the utterances of Divinity 
Itself! The very act of subjecting man's reason to such state- 
ments as authority would blind him to the perception, and 
thus real authority, of inflowing truth itself. It would be 
putting man's mind, not his hands, into gyves. It would de- 
stroy his freedom, and thus his manhood. Why, the man of 
the New Jerusalem phase of humanity is the man, not groping 
in the dark valley and capable only of being taught in words, 
and how to live on that low plane and as a merely sensuous 
man, as the Israelite was, but actually rising on the acclivity 
of the mountain, and capable of being rationally instructed in 
the processes of rising, and at length capable of actually seeing, 
and trusting in, and being exclusively guided by the increasing 
light itself of the now almost visible summit. 

7. Wants of the Coming Man. 

The man of the noble, Godlike phase of humanity now 
developing is to be an internal, not an external man. It is 
the external man that must have truth finited and clothed, 
measured down to him in verbal teachings, in accommodation 
to his state. When very external, truth must come to him 
verbalized into specific statements of what he must do, and of 
what he must not do, as a merely physical or sensuous man ; 
it must, as it were, be pushed down to him in such a form 
that he can see it sensuously, and feel compelled to obey it, and 
to obey it, though blindly, as imperative, unintelligible, arbi- 
trary authority. This is the counterpart of that internal state 



DOCTRINE AND THE HOLY CITY. 221 

to which truth comes with no less authority, and with no less 
imperativeness, but without the appearance of either ; it giving, 
at the same time, a " perception that it is so," and striking a 
cordially responsive chord in man's nature. Then there are 
the intervening states which are, as it were, the " highway" 
from the former to the latter, and over which we must all 
pass. These are states in which we are passing from that of 
the mere blind authority of verbal truth to that of clearly per- 
ceived " intellectual or spiritual [thus real] truth." We have 
left our port, have left our " father's house ;" we have too 
much knowledge and too much rationality to stay where we 
were, to stay in what was once home to us, to stay longer in, 
as it were, our " swaddling-clothes," — we have " put out to 
sea," and a pathless sea. But if we have been obedient to 
authority we are prepared to navigate the sea ; our ship is fur- 
nished with all the appliances needed to make our voyage a 
safe one, and even though the sun by day, and the pole-star by 
night, be clouded over. We are in a transition state. We are 
trying our manhood. We have outgrown that blind, sensuous 
state in which we believed — or thought we did — every word 
of the Bible, " because the Bible said if." We have come 
into a higher state, in which something within prompts us to 
inquire whether it is, and why and how it is, — which is neces- 
sarily a sort of doubting or sceptical state. Our minds are 
now made up of different materials, have different capacities, 
and are subject to different influences ; to the mere "sensuals" 
of the former state we have added, and are adding, "scien- 
tifics" and " rationals." Rightfully now everything must bear 
the test of reason, the as yet highest attribute of our nature. 
The Scriptures which we had obeyed, and the principles we 
had acquired from mere blind authority, must now be brought 
to the bar of reason, else we must necessarily remain of the 
religion in which we were born and educated, and even though 
this be paganism. 

And here is precisely where the writings of Swedenborg 



222 SWEDENBORG AND THE NEW AGE. 

come in to help us. It is when we have outgrown, and become 
dissatisfied with, mere sensuous authority, and we yearn for a 
rational, practical view of things. They are our compass on 
the sea, but not to be followed blindly, — we should then be no 
better than we were, — but rationally. They are now to be 
our authority, but by no means in the sense in which the letter 
of the Word was to the Israelites ; not authority as the Bible 
was and is to a state of mere unreasoning " sensuals," but au- 
thority such as is required by, and is possible to, a state of 
" scientifics" and " rationals." And what kind of authority is 
this but rational authority ? And what is that but a satisfac- 
tion, as well as aid to our reason ? If these Writings do not 
find a response in our reason, then they are not authority for 
us ; and to acknowledge them as such would not exactly belittle 
our manhood, but would show how little manhood we have. 
Different from the letter of the Scriptures, these Writings are 
addressed to our reason, and are to be acknowledged by our 
reason, when truly acknowledged at all. If you choose to 
express it so, they are the Lord's appeal to our reason ; and for 
this reason they are an appeal made through a most eminently 
rational medium, and not the less rational because internally 
inspired or illuminated. But even though the Lord's appeal, 
even though we admit (which, I repeat, we by no means do) 
that they are the Lord's writings, thus the Lord's Word, they 
are, nevertheless, an appeal to reason ; and they must therefore 
be regarded only as rational authority, or authority to man's 
reason. And this is the highest and only authority that it is 
now, while man is in this transition state of scientifics and 
rationals, possible for him to acknowledge and obey. He can 
now no more acknowledge sensuous truth as authority than he 
could, while in mere " sensuals," acknowledge rational truth as 
authority. And he certainly cannot acknowledge intellectual 
or perceptive truth until he comes into a state in which he can 
perceive it. He must first let rational truth do its work — and 
its work is that of regeneration, as well as of culture and de- 



DOCTRINE AND THE HOLY CITY. 223 

velopment — before it will be possible for him to be in a state 
to perceive truth, thus doctrine that " lives" which is "truth 
continuous from the Lord," which is the doctrine of the New 
Jerusalem, which doctrine is the New Jerusalem, and which 
truth, when perceived or as perceived, is the Advent of the 
Lord, as shown above from Swedenborg. When rational truth 
has thus done its work, then, and only then, is a man in a state 
to " believe first, and afterwards confirm by rational consider- 
ations." This is what we understand Swedenborg to mean 
when he says, " Now it is permitted to enter intellectually into 
the mysteries of faith." Man was not capable of this before, 
was not capable of true rationals, and thus of arriving at length 
at " intellectual truth." His ship was driven hither and thither 
by every changing " wind of doctrine," he was lost upon the 
sea and without any intelligible reckonings. Now, on the con- 
trary, man has his nautical instruments, and knows how to use 
them and his reckonings, and he trusts in them as his guide 
until he comes within the range of the reflected light [per- 
ceptive truth] of his destined port, when he spontaneously 
abandons all such aids, except as confirmations, and follows 
his sight. 

8. Conclusion. 

"What, then, do all the labored arguments of " Authority in 
the New Church," and all the zealous efforts to prove that the 
Writings are the Lord's, amount to ? Why simply this : if a 
legitimate use has been made of Swedenborg's teachings, if 
they have not been perverted, and the meaning of extracts 
from them distorted, — and I do not believe that they have 
been so, intentionally,^ — they simply prove that Swedenborg's 
writings are utterly unworthy of our confidence, either as his 
writings or as the Lord's writings, and unworthy of Sweden- 
borg himself, as a man of the New Age. For they make 
Swedenborg contradict, in the most unmistakable manner, the 
very philosophy of man, of God, and of man's relation to 
G-od, which it was the chief aim of his writings to set forth. 



224 SWEDENBORG AND THE NEW AGE. 

They not only fail to recognize, but they make him virtually 
contradict his most important teachings about the real nature 
and wants of that most interesting and important transition 
phase of man's nature intervening between his state of sensuals 
and his state of intellectual or perceptive truth. By giving the 
Writings (including even the "Spiritual Diary"), even every 
verbal statement of them, — the Authority of " thus saith the 
Lord," they virtually dwarf this part of man's nature down 
into his state of mere sensuals. They take away man's high- 
way out of Egypt to Canaan. They carry man back to the 
old Israelitish state which could be reached only by arbitrary 
precepts and commands. " Thou shalt" and " thou shalt not" 
was the only form of authority that the Israelite could ac- 
knowledge. And this must be enforced by threatened judg- 
ments. This, on the contrary, is an age of truth as authority, 
truth in its form of living light shining in the mind, not of 
words spoken in the ear. Words, with the real man of this 
age, from whatever Source, have no authority, and they should 
have none, but as they are mediums of intellectual truth, of real 
living light to the rational faculty. For man is now coming 
to be man, Godlike man, which he had never been before. 

What, then, is the position of the real man of this age— 
the man of the real New Jerusalem— in regard to the Writings 
of Swedenborg ? It is that of a rational inquirer, as in regard 
to the writings of any other author, weighing them and judg- 
ing them according to the measure of rational satisfaction he 
derives from them. They are authority to him just so far. and 
only so far as they help him to rationally see truth, or what is 
truth to him; and then it is not the Writings, which are mere 
statements of truth, but the truth itself thus rationally *"«, 
—which is the Lord— that is the authority. No modest man 
who considers the real nature of Swedenborg's mission and his 
wonderful qualifications for it will, for a moment, question the 
accuracy of his statements, because he does not understand 
them, or because they seem inconsistent with other statements ; 



DOCTRINE AND THE HOLT CITY. 225 

but he will not be a blind slave to them ; he will simply sus- 
pend his judgment, remembering that he is yet groping in 
comparative darkness, under the clouds, low down on the ac- 
clivity of the mountain, whilst Swedenborg, when he wrote, 
had risen above the clouds into the bright light of the summit. 
The Divine words — but words enforced by the terrible quak- 
ings and thunderings of the burning Mount — were authority 
to the sensuous Israelites ; the Lord's personal teachings, 
when confirmed by " signs and wonders," were authority to 
the only less dark-minded christian ; but it is truth rationally 
seen, thus the real spirit of the Word, that is to be authority 
to the " coming man." We go to Swedenborg, as to one who 
has gone before, for a verbal description of the way of life ; 
we go to the Word, thus to the Lord, for light to shine in the 
way. And this is the difference between the Lord's writings 
— Sacred Scripture — and Swedenborg's writings : the former, 
being correspondences, are mediums of light as well as of 
verbal instruction, thus of conjunction with the Lord ; whilst 
the latter, not being correspondences, are mediums only of 
verbal teachings about the Light, thus about the Lord. Swed- 
enborg wrote while in the light, thus as illuminated by it ; but 
the light did not flow down through his pen into his words 
and illuminate them, nor did it make them mediums of light 
to the reader. The Prophets, on the contrary, did not write 
in the light, yet their words, being the Lord's words, and 
therefore correspondences, were, qualifiedly, mediums of the 
light to the devout reader. Swedenborg's writings, therefore, 
are simply mediums of rational instruction ; the Word, besides, 
of spiritually warming, illuminating, living light. 



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